


Wiltshire

by VexLonely



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dark Magic, F/M, Nature Abhors a Vacuum, Slow Burn, Voldemort Dies
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2021-01-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:41:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 7
Words: 25,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23042662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VexLonely/pseuds/VexLonely
Summary: As Bellatrix Lestrange summons the Dark Lord to Malfoy Manor, Gellert Grindewald kills Lord Voldemort. Factions explode, alliances mutate, and an unlikely romance starts.
Relationships: Hermione Granger/Lucius Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy/Narcissa Black Malfoy
Comments: 78
Kudos: 184





	1. Chapter 1

It is not my intention to profit from this work or claim its characters as my own. This is a slow burn. Canon divergence and quotations from page 472 of J.K. Rowling’s _Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows”._

========================================================================

_“Kill me then!” demanded the old man. “You will not win, you cannot win! That wand will never, ever be yours—”_

_Voldemort’s fury broke: A burst of green light filled the prison room and then_ Voldemort’s body was encompassed by a pain suddenly all too familiar and horrifically foreign. He fell back, lifeless, the hidden, smoking wand of Gellert Grindewald the last image in his mind. 

========================================================================

When Bellatrix finally offered to feed her to Fenrir Greyback, Hermione’s mind seized the way it had under the cruciatus curse.

On one hand, the current hellscape had an end. Hermione was going to be mauled by the werewolf and that she welcomed the end was in itself a testament to Bellatrix’s prowess as a torturer. Her whole body shuddered with pain. She hoped she’d pass out once the wolf ripped into her.

Somewhere to her left Ron’s battle cry registered and then curses were flashing like fireworks above where she lay prone. She heard Harry shout _"Stupefy!”_ and wondered how he’d gotten a wand. Claw-like fingers drug her up in a pincer grip. Steel and wiry curls scraped against her throat before an unearthly gurgle ripped through Harry’s body.

Hermione struggled against Bellatrix’s hold and tried to focus her swollen, tearful eyes. Harry Potter was doubled over in pain and screamed as if possessed. His spine contorted. The volatile room stopped in its tracks. Hermione’s chest heaved against Bellatrix’s pressure.

Harry collapsed, gasping like he was the survivor of a shipwreck that had been trapped belowdecks. He sucked in air with a hollow, rasping sound, his lungs working in the way that Hermione’s lungs craved. Harry’s hadn’t been burned by eight-too-many Crucios.

“Well?” Bellatrix’s childlike scream burst against her eardrum.

Harry’s eyes slid open as if he was seeing the room for the first time before widening in self-conscious panic. He stared at Hermione, his green eyes searing and far too uncertain.

“He’s dead. Voldemort. Gone.”

A tumultuous beat. Another. Time dragged and Hermione's perception narrowed until all she could feel was the metallic blade against her neck. Bellatrix didn’t have a reason to keep her hostage anymore. Suddenly—

_Nothing._

“AVADA KEDAVRA!”

Bellatrix’s weight left her body and Hermione collapsed onto the floor alongside the woman that had carved into her arm moments ago. She looked up to see a rather terrified-looking Draco Malfoy, pointing a wand at a spot three feet above her head.

Narcissa Malfoy wailed, and hell broke loose.

It seemed impossible that Bellatrix was dead, but as Hermione dropped to her knees and began to scramble to the perimeter of the room, she untangled the dark witch’s feet from her own. It seemed impossible that Draco had killed her, but as Hermione half-hauled, half-sank against the drawing room wallpaper, she saw that he was paler than ever, locked in a free-for-all duel with Ron.

Harry seemed as shaken as her, and Hermione wondered briefly at his physical reaction to Voldemort’s death.

Narcissa, collapsed near Bellatrix’s body, was looking between her dead sister and her son with an unreadable cocktail of emotions on her usually impeccable face. 

And then—

“ _Sonorous_.”

A authoritative voice boomed, its tone full of a calm urgency. “Listen to me now.”

She’d forgotten about Lucius Malfoy.

The room froze. Ron looked up in surprise at the elder Malfoy and stopped focusing on Draco, who took the opportunity to land one last, wet-sounding punch on the redhead’s jaw.

“If we are to survive the next handful of hours, the Manor’s blood wards must be fortified.” Hermione missed Lucius's countercurse, but he must have performed it wandlessly, for he spoke his next words at normal volume.

“Several Death Eaters are waiting outside the gates. Draco, to me.”

The son walked towards the father, and the blonde heads pressed together for an instant. Lucius hugged Draco to him in a display of fatherly affection that surprised Hermione.

"Don't you mean your friends?" Harry shot, his hair full of dust.

“You must to be keyed into the wards yourselves.” Lucius explained smoothly. Ron and Harry’s protests died on their lips as he cut them off with an imperial wave of his hand. “I don’t like it anymore than you, Potter— Weasley.”

With a swish of a wand that Hermione was certain wasn’t his, Lucius levitated a stupefied Fenrir Greyback from the corner where he had fallen. Hermione remembered Harry casting the curse. It seemed forever ago now.

Ron piped up again as the werewolf’s body hit the ground. “And what are you going to do with him, eh?” He was sweaty, passion pouring out faster than sense. “Does that son of a bitch fall under your slimy protection too? He eats bloody children! We’d would rather—”

Lucius spoke _“Avada Kedavra!_ ” simultaneously as Hermione yelled, “RONALD! Shut up!”

The three Malfoys and Harry turned to look at her. She and Ron were startled by Lucius's killing curse as it sunk into Fenrir Greyback’s shoulder.

“Hermione?” Harry asked.

“Think for one second!” Hermione’s voice was a hollow rasp, torn by constant screams. “Do you see how everything has changed?”

Hermione noted in her periphery that Lucius’s gaze slid from Harry and Ron to the werewolf’s corpse and settled on her with an unreadable expression.

“Draco murdered his aunt. I saw it, you saw it, we all saw it! Bellatrix Lestrange. Voldemort’s second in command, the obvious successor to whatever hellish empire this whole war is about. And that? That changes everything—”

Hermione was running out of air before she could run out of words. “Let's survive before every Death Eater looking for answers comes to storm Malfoy Manor.”

“Miss Granger is correct.” Narcissa Malfoy had finally risen from her sister’s body and was now clutching Draco to her side. “Bella was insane, but _every one_ of those rats will come looking for confirmation as they realize their fading marks mean that Voldemort is dead.”

“We don’t know that Malfoy's telling the truth.” Harry countered. “The Death Eaters might not be outside. What if this is a scheme?”

“To simplify the words of Miss Granger,” Lucius' low voice fell from his mouth without effort in contrast to her survivor’s wheeze. He was answering Harry’s question, but met her curious eyes directly. “Nature abhors a vacuum.”

“The Malfoys couldn’t have known that Voldemort would die. They only know because they saw Harry’s reaction, just like you and me.” Hermione spoke directly to Ron this time. "Unless you want to apparate back out into the woods _without a tent_ , this is our option."

Lucius rolled back his sleeve, ink coming into view. “The older Death Eaters will understand what this means. They will all know soon enough.” Nimble fingers worked quickly to expose his forearm and then his eyes caught hers again. “Narcissa is right. The Mark is already beginning to fade.”

Hermione shuddered, feeling the gravity of their situation once more.

“It’s us or the mob Potter,” the younger Malfoy, always a quick study, reasoned.

With a wand movement as if the matter was decided, Lucius settled into an ornate chair and turned to his wife. “Narcissa, if you would?”

The older witch raised the hand that wasn’t wrapped around her son into the air expectantly. Within seconds a dagger, wicked-looking and ornate, flew gently into her reach. She passed it to Draco with shaking hands.

Hermione, Harry and Ron could only watch the scene unfold. She’d read about blood warding and shouldn’t have been surprised that the Malfoys used such old property magic. She’d have suggested it herself while they were on the run, had the physical toll of bloodletting been worth the extra protection.

Lucius had one palm flat and facedown, raising up a blackened stone mortar through the floor that Hermione was suddenly sure was the Manor’s heartstone. Undulating inky blackness swirled where it was magically contained within the stone. Hermione gasped at the novelty of it all but didn’t dare interrupt.

“Once I begin,” Lucius dictated clearly, “gather close and bleed quickly. Time is of the essence.”

“Tallie?” Narcissa asked loudly.

The crack of a house-elf’s apparition preceded the shaking visage of a small, presumably female house elf. “Yes Lady Malfoy?”

“Tallie, dear.” Narcissa leaned down to ensure the full weight of her words. “There are several of our old _friends_ waiting outside the gates. They will likely be angry, but we need you to distract them for as long as you can.”

Tallie nodded quickly, her bulbous eyes betraying only a little fear. “Tallie is happy to help the most noble house of Malfoy, oh yes. But, missus,” she started. “What is Tallie to say? Master’s friends hate Tallie.”

Lucius cut in quickly. “Tell them that Bellatrix Lestrange is dead, that is the truth, you can see Mistress Bella's corpse right here." The elf squeaked, noticing Bellatrix for the first time. "Tell them that they are to wait outside the manor until the Dark Lord returns from his travels abroad. Those who do not comply will earn his wrath.”

Tallie nodded, and with a crack, was gone.

Hermione felt a brief flash of admiration for Lucius. He'd sewn a quick half-truth that might provide just enough shock to buy them time, while concealing the full truth of Voldemort's demise.

Lucius was turning, focused once more on the heartstone. He uttered a series of dark-sounding words that set the hairs on the back of Hermione’s neck on end. With a complicated wand movement, the heart stone shuddered and the inky black substance leached out onto the floor.

“Draco. Quickly.” Lucius intoned.

Narcissa gave Draco a light shove and the younger blonde drew the dagger while stepping towards his father. He placed the tip of it to the inside of Lucius’s elbow and drew it down swiftly, opening a massive seam in his forearm.

Blood streamed onto the heartstone and was absorbed like water into a sponge.

Draco passed the dagger to Lucius, the latter bleeding freely onto the heartstone, and offered his arm to his father.

Lucius made a smaller incision on Draco and then both ran scarlet onto the stone. Narcissa came up behind Draco to do the same, baring her arm to her husband. When it was done, Lucius looked up and hissed.

“Come quickly, and find a wand. They’re on their way.”

Hermione shoved off of the wall and staggered towards the family, despite all the unanswered questions rocketing around through her head. _How could Lucius tell? Was his biological connection to the Manor that specific? Was Tallie alive? Were they being tricked after all?_

Harry was the quickest and he approached the bloodstained Lucius Malfoy with resigned hatred. Soon, the blood of the Boy Who Lived was sucked into the heartstone of Malfoy Manor.

Hermione offered her own arm, and locked eyes with the Malfoy patriarch. Her blood, her unbelievably dirty blood had been manipulated into the root cause of a goddamn _war_ and now he was going to touch her voluntarily?

Lucius seemed to understand her train of thought and held her glare evenly. She winced when he made a small incision into her forearm and she bled for the second time that day. Her muggleborn blood splashed bright and fresh onto the heartstone. She ripped her hand out of his loose grasp.

“Mr. Weasley, any day now.” Narcissa’s voice was sharp and quick as it fought to hide her desperation.

Ron was livid, face ruddy and pinched. He started to shake his head violently but Harry grabbed him by the shoulders and hauled him closer. Hermione concentrated on searching for a wand, knowing that the more eyes were on Ron the more dramatic he’d be.

By the time she had found one and turned around, Lucius was throwing Ron’s bloody hand back towards him and finishing the dark incantation from before. Hermione whispered a healing charm over her recent wound.

The heartstone shuddered and sank back through the floor, much redder and more vibrant in color than it had been before. The Manor seemed to stretch as one, like it was working out the kinks left over from a nap, and then settled still. 

“Father?” Draco asked.

Lucius raised his eyes to his son. “It is done. Now we wait.”

“Tallie?” Lucius continued, and the she-elf reappeared with a crack.

Her nose was bleeding, and one eye was swollen shut, as if she’d been kicked or bludgeoned. She was standing in an off-balance way that hinted at a few broken ribs.

  
“Master Lucius, yes!” 

“Tallie, heal your wounds and fetch two blood replenishing potions for myself and Miss Granger.” The elf nodded at her master’s words. “How many made it through the gate?”

The elf was focusing on resetting her ribs but wheezed out, “Inside maybe five. Dolohov. The Lestranges.”

The elf shook lightly. “In masks, Tallie could not recognize. Tallie was distracted by their kickses and their hisses.”

“Thank you, Tallie.” Narcissa replied.

“Of course, mistress.” Tallie popped away, returning briefly with the potions. As she passed a vial to Hermione, Lucius stood, downing his and looking out the large windows. Harry, Ron, and Hermione all followed, realizing that they were about to fight several of the nastier Death Eaters.

“I, personally, have been waiting almost thirty years to blast Rodolphus and Rabastan off of this earth.” Lucius spoke with the sneer of disdain, and Hermione wondered, not for the first time, at the Malfoys’ motivations.

“And you, Miss Granger,” Lucius continued, jaw set and gaze focused on the small bodies running headlong up the Malfoys’ long driveway. “You owe Dolohov an Unforgivable or two.”

Hermione took one last glance around the window at the figures and narrowed her eyes in determination at Harry and Ron. The game was different now.


	2. Chapter 2

When she was younger, Hermione remembered being in the passenger seat of a car. 

Her father had been driving. She recalled the way he’d maneuvered them into the oncoming lane in order to pass a slow driver in their own. The young Hermione had nearly burst into anxious tears when she’d seen a car, closer than seemed safe, driving headlong towards them at full speed. She had no doubt, years later, that her father had properly judged the distance— they’d made it, after all. Despite that, she couldn’t shake the paralysing fear that came before a collision, especially one that was so out of her control.

“Granger.” 

Draco Malfoy’s voice broke her reverie. He extended his palm. 

“We have to do something about that.” Draco nodded at her arm, still oozing from what Hermione assumed was the wound of a cursed blade. 

She came back to herself. Harry was hovering in their periphery, making sure that Draco wasn’t up to no good.

“Wh—what do you suggest?” her voice still broken from all the screaming.

She didn’t miss the look of surprise on Draco’s face. 

“I don’t know what curse she used.” He paused before taking her wrist in a cool, clinical grasp. “But Bellatrix used this dagger before on me as well and it heals regularly.”

She tried to meet his eyes at that confession, but he looked steadfastly away. I’m guessing the reason you’re still bleeding is because of some anti-muggle sentiment.” 

Hermione raised her eyebrows at him, not wanting to repeat her question. Draco sighed. 

“A stasis charm is the only thing I can think of. Either it’ll do for now, or we’ll all be dead soon.” She expected him to smirk, but he did not.

With a wordless incantation, it was done. She caught his eyes, impressed, and nodded in gratitude.

Past Draco’s right shoulder, Lucius Malfoy was summoning furniture from rooms and hallways into the drawing room. He’d enlisted Harry and Ron while she’d been distracted by Draco. The boys were levitating the assortment with care, followed by Narcissa, who cast sticking charms on every armoire, grandfather clock, and side table that Lucius could call forth. 

Eventually, the stack formed a multi-tiered barricade and the group congregated in the middle of the room. Palms sweaty, she grabbed at Harry and Ron. Narcissa had pulled Draco to her side and was running a hand through his hair. 

Lucius Malfoy gave an audible hiss and lurched forward, eyes bright and trained on the doors. 

“They’re here.” 

The air itself was menacing. Silent. And then—

_BANG._

Lucius flinched again, but only for an instant, gritting his teeth as the magic of the manor’s wards alerted him to danger. 

Hermione gripped her wand in a sweaty grasp. She tried not to focus on the stiffening bodies of Bellatrix Lestrange and Fenrir Greyback in front of the large fireplace. She felt bile rising in her throat, and considered that maybe she was having a physical reaction to the threatened wards as well, now that she was keyed to them.

Ron’s comforting hand made her feel restless, not calm, and she resisted the urge to shrug it off her shoulder. She could sense Harry’s tension behind her, and could have counted his measured, anxious exhales if she tried. 

They had been on the run for so long now. Fatigue threatened to settle into her bones. 

Narcissa Malfoy was white as a sheet, though her grip on her wand was steady. The Malfoy men, she noticed, were locked in a moment of intense eye contact. Hermione wondered what they were communicating, realizing that one or both of them were likely legilimens. 

What sort of good was standing here and waiting? 

She looked around the room, trying to squash her rising panic with logic. The barrier in front of the door had been a good idea, but there had to be something else. Besides that, the room was now uselessly bare. 

Her hackles gave an involuntary raise and shudder, and then Hermione cast a small healing charm on her throat and turned to the group. 

“Are we witches and wizards or not?” 

The Malfoys’ eyes flickered to her in surprise, ranging from concern to curiosity. 

“There has to be more we can do!” Hermione burst. “I need to do something, I need to move, or I’ll scream.” 

From the distance— _BANG!_

Hermione paced around, flipping her wand from hand to hand and running her fingers along her scalp. She looked towards the door, then at her two friends. A plan was coming to her, and she–

“Ron?” He met her eyes. “Harry?” He nodded. 

She met their hesitation with instructions. 

“I’m going to put you under disillusionment.” She batted their protests from the air. “If you’re hidden, you’ll be more effective. I want you to hide on either side of the door, that way you can surprise them from behind should the Death Eaters—” 

“It is not a matter of ‘ _should they_ ’, Miss Granger, but ‘ _when they_.” Lucius interrupted with narrowed eyes and grit teeth. Whatever the Death Eaters were attempting on the wards was wearing on his patience. 

Hermione resisted the urge to roll her eyes at the expression on his face. 

“Okay, _when_ the Death Eaters break through our barricade, they won’t know there are more fighters in the room than they can see.” Hermione was talking quickly now, eyes imploring. 

“Is anyone particularly good at supersensory charms?” She asked the room. 

Narcissa raised her chin and met Hermione’s gaze. “Which?” 

“Vision improving. For everyone. I’m about to make it harder to see in here.” 

Hermione turned to Draco. “Do they know you’re here? Home from Hogwarts?” 

The blonde shook his head with an overwhelmed uncertainty. “I don’t know.” 

At the look on her face, he gathered his wits. “Some of them— er, Dolohov does. The Dark Lord made him and I—” His voice caught in his throat. “Made us set a muggle apartment building on fire three days ago.” 

Hermione nodded. “You and your father should be the first they see. It’ll keep them talking longer.” 

_BANG— BANG!_

“Miss Granger,” intoned Lucius sardonically, his face grim. “We haven’t much longer.” 

Hermione nodded. 

Narcissa had just finished casting charms on Harry and Ron, and moved in front of her to do the same. Hermione forced her breath to even out as the witch pointed a wand at her pupils. With a muttered charm and a mild pricking sensation, Narcissa continued towards her husband and son. 

With a reassuring glance back at Harry and Ron, she rounded on Lucius and Draco with a sense of urgency. Lucius was blinking after just having received the vision charm himself. 

Had his eyes always been such a poignant grey?

_BANG!!_

It was getting louder now. Hermione shook her head, refocusing. 

“Which one of you is the better Legilimens?” she asked, gesturing between Lucius and Draco. A gamble, but one she was fairly sure she knew the answer to. 

“I am.” Lucius said evenly, despite the jumping vein she could see fluttering in his neck.

She drew breath. “Harry and Ron will be sentries, hidden near the entrance so that they can hit the Death Eaters unawares while they’re distracted. I’m going to make it foggy here with an atmospheric. The longer we keep them from—” 

_BANG!_ The manor wheezed and shuddered. 

“The longer we keep them confused, the better our advantage.” She spun to Harry and Ron, who, despite their earlier protests, had no better ideas. Turning them towards either side of the door, she cast disillusionment charms on them with haste. 

“And if we can stall by getting relevant information out of them,” Hermione looked at Lucius with intent, “all the better.” 

“Narcissa should probably be visible, with you and Draco.” Hermione continued rapidly. “Nothing strange about that, it's your house. Mrs. Malfoy, would you be comfortable, er— grieving over Bellatrix?” The witch nodded. “If any of them listened to Tallie, they’ll be expecting her body.” 

Lucius strode calmly over to Bellatrix’s body and levitated it to the middle of the room. Hermione used every ounce of self control she had not to look at the black curls dragging on the ground, remembering how they smelt pressed into her face. 

_BANG!_ And with that, a massive ripping sound tore through the air.

The manor seemed to shift violently, and Bellatrix’s body plummeted with a wet crunch as Lucius doubled over. 

“You—Granger.” Lucius breathed, standing again. “Hurry. They’re in.” 

She caught Lucius’ hand quickly and ignored the way he started in surprise. ”I’ll be standing right to the side of the fireplace, out of sight of the doors. When it’s time to fight, cast your thoughts to me. I’ll create a distraction.” 

Hermione tried to ignore the small rim of dark sapphire that appeared around the edges of Lucius’ irises when his pupils narrowed. She forced down her surprise that his hand was shockingly warm in her own. 

She tried to ignore the fact that she may be laying her and her two best friends nicely into a trap should the Malfoys' unlikely alliance turn on them. 

“And then?” Draco’s wavering voice cut through. 

“And then we fight.” Hermione turned towards them breathlessly, letting go of the Malfoy patriarch to look to the door. 

“Alright Harry? Ron?” 

Their answering grunts heard, she moved quickly beyond the fireplace not a moment too soon. The sound of rushing footsteps, several pairs, getting closer, and then— 

The crash of impact and the keening of old wood against the drawing room doors dominated her senses and fresh adrenaline flooded her veins. Flexing her fingers around her wand once more, Hermione tried to fight her sudden nausea. 

_Knock_ . _Knock_ \- _knock_. 

“ _Nebbiolus_.” 

Hermione muttered the incantation with a sweep of her wand. Fog gathered in the room, and would have obscured most details from her vision were it not for the sharpness of Narcissa’s vision-enhancing charm. 

Her breathing was so loud that she almost missed the muffled voices outside the door. She glanced frantically at the spaces where he knew Harry and Ron stood, closest to the action. 

Another bang on the door, and then a man’s voice— “ _Difindo!_ ” 

The antique doorknob on their side of the drawing room was severed, and rolled down the backing of an ornate crystal mirror and onto the floor. It moved ominously towards the center of the room and drew Hermione’s eyes up to the Malfoys, standing as a unit in the middle. 

“ _Easy now, Miss Granger._ ” 

Hermione started, eyes locked on Lucius Malfoy as the legilimens spoke words into her consciousness. He was standing still, proud, hand twirling his wand almost idly. If she hadn’t known better, she’d have thought that the three blondes were posing for a family portrait. 

“ _All plans and no courage?_ ” Lucius goaded her, able to sense her fear, entrenched as he was in the folds of her mind. The corner of his mouth twitched infinitesimally. “ _How very Slytherin of you after all._ ” 

The door creaked on its hinges, but despite the severed lock, the mountain of furniture barely budged. 

Hermione shook her head slowly, leaning into the not all-together unpleasant sensation of Lucius’s low voice, and then—

“ _Bombarda!_ ” 

A fist-sized hole was blasted through the thick wall of the drawing room doors. Narcissa dropped to her knees, taking Bellatrix’s now-cold hand in her own. 

“What’s this, Lucius?” An arrogant voice preceded a lone eyeball. It peeped through the splintered hole, gaze careening wildly at the chairs and tables and fog. “Did a storm roll through on our way here?”

Hermione ducked back behind the fireplace, avoiding the body of Fenrir Greyback, which was beginning to look incredibly corpse-like as the final vestiges of heat drained and rigor mortis set in. 

A voice from the door. “How are we supposed to speak to each other if all of your…” the voice drifted briefly. “I don’t bloody know, do I?” 

A moment of bickering. From her hiding spot, Hermione watched as Lucius grinned ferally.

“That _is_ my wife!” A second voice from through the door.

“Ah, Rodolphus. Welcome back.” Lucius spoke for the first time. “I should have known you’d come.” 

Narcissa’s head shot up from where it had been trained on Bellatrix’s body. 

Shuffling sounds. “Spare me the act, Lucius.” The short, wet splat of a man’s spit against the floor. “Who did her?” 

Hermione watched Lucius drop a hand on to Draco’s shoulder and then onto Narcissa’s hair. He paced forward slowly, not quite out of her sight, but close enough to draw the gaze of the men outside. 

“I’m afraid— It was the Granger girl.” he lied.

His words had the desired effect. Another bout of shuffling commenced and then Hermione’s spine began to crawl at the third voice. 

“Potter’s mudblood?” The sickeningly familiar leer cut in. “Where is she? She and I are unfinished… business.” She heard the smile in his voice despite being unable to see it, and prayed silently that Ron and Harry kept their tempers in check. 

“Antonin.” Lucius sneered. “I wish that I could say that it was lovely to see you.” 

Hermione’s mind raced. At least three Death Eaters, likely more. As soon as she revealed herself, she would have Dolohov’s focus drawn to her, and possibly that of Rodolphus as well. Furiously repressing Dolohov’s debauched and wild grins from the last time she’d seen him, she forced herself to breathe. It would give the others plenty of opportunity to act. 

Lucius was still talking, replying to something from outside the door.

“Ah, yes. Funny little trick, that. You see, my father was a vicious man. The hallway trench was his way of punishing the leader of any group foolish enough to try the manor.” A bitter edge crept into the blonde’s voice. “Scatter the group, leave them panicking and afraid while their bravest’s head rests below the floorboards on a pike. Positively medieval. _Very_ Slytherin.” 

Grunting and more scuffling reached her ears, and then a massive crash as a heavy armoire toppled from the stack. Draco threw up a shield charm and Hermione could see glass and wood shrapnel breaking around it. 

“I’ve had enough of this. _Bombarda Maxima!”_

The following explosion made Hermione’s ears ring, and she pressed herself firmly against the fireplace, not daring to look until she heard the sound of Narcissa’s voice. 

“Can we not have peace, Rodolphus?” Narcissa pleaded, standing. “Bellatrix is dead, and she’s not coming back! Must we create more of a mess for the Dark Lord once he returns?” 

Hermione doubted that that lie would hold much longer. 

“Peace?” Lestrange snarled. “You locked us out? You murder Yaxley and Rowle in a trap, and now you withhold my wife from me? _I will have my vengeance_.” 

“ _Confringo!_ ” The blasting charm sent another chair flying, and she heard the scuffling of clambering men through broken wood. 

“Where is the girl?” Dolohov’s wheeze was unmistakable. 

“Should the Dark Lord hear of your plans to steal the mudblood _he desires the most_ out from under his nose,” Lucius tutted aristocratically, despite the heat of the moment. “He may not be so forgiving.” 

“SHE’S MINE BY RIGHTS! SHE KILLED MY WIFE!” Hermione now recognized the yell as belonging to Rodolphus Lestrange. 

“As long as you give me a turn with her before you kill her, Lestrange—” 

Lucius interrupted Dolohov. “Ah! Perfection. Seeing as you shared Bellatrix with the Dark Lord, Rodolphus, I can’t see why that would be a problem.” 

Rodolphus’s answering roar was drowned out by the final shattering of furniture. Hermione wanted a moment to consider Lucius’s last statement, but wasn’t afforded the time. His eyes seared into hers. 

“ _Now._ ” 

With a quick banishing charm, Hermione expelled the corpse of Fenrir Greyback towards the encroaching Death Eaters.

Rodolphus Lestrange stepped onto the gassy belly of the werewolf and had time to jump back in shocked disgust right before Hermione cast again. 

“ _Confringo!_ ” 

Greyback’s fetid body exploded with the force of her spell, scattering wet chunks onto the three men. 

She saw the twin blossoms of Harry and Ron’s shield charms behind the Death Eaters as the intruders gagged loudly. 

“ _I_ _ncarcerous!_ ” 

Rippling cords lashed out at the men, catching the leg of the man she assumed to be Rabastan Lestrange. 

Hermione jumped out from behind the fireplace fully. Narcissa Malfoy was sending jinx after jinx at Rodolphus as he rushed Lucius, covered in gore. 

“ _Expelliarmus_!” Harry’s voice cut through, the red light of his curse missing Dolohov by a hair. 

The Death Eater rounded on Harry, now visible as the fog cleared through the cavernous hole in the drawing room doors. 

“Oy! Dolohov!” Ron shouted, pulling focus. He sent a dark blue looking curse at the Death Eater, who went flying into a wall. 

“ _Reducto!”_ Hermione turned the floor underneath Rabastan Lestrange to shrapnel. He was cutting himself out of his bonds while firing curse after curse at Draco. 

Lucius’s laugh drew her attention. 

He was fighting in tandem, body between Narcissa and Rodolphus. 

“Never could handle her, could you, Lestrange? Hard to be married to the Dark Lord’s favourite, was it?” said Lucius cruelly, dodging a nasty-looking black curse. 

Rodolphus roared like an animal and Hermione looked away as a curse sung past her ear. 

From across the room, Dolohov grinned and blew a kiss at her. 

“ _Levicorpus!_ ” she shot back, ducking behind the burnt end of a couch. 

She could hear a scuffle to her right and Harry and Ron’s voices as they dueled a newcomer in a mask. The thought filled her with dread. There were more on the way. 

Draco yelped, Rabastan had hit him with a tripping jinx, leaving the Death Eater enough time to scramble to his feet. 

She popped over the couch, leading with her wand. “ _Silencio!_ ”

Dolohov laughed, bouncing the curse off of his shield. 

“Not this time, mudblood.” He sent a burst of purple fire that she recognized all too well over her head as she ducked back behind the couch. “But I’m so glad you remember our first time.” 

Sweat trickled into her eyes, but she hadn’t time to bat it away. A woman screamed. Narcissa.

She stood. 

Dolohov met her eyes and cocked his head. 

“ _Sectumsempra!_ ” she cried.

“ _Crucio!_ ” 

They cast simultaneously. Hermione dodged just in time, countering with a body binding curse after her first spell thudded uselessly into the wall behind Dolohov. 

He dodged again, and then recast with purple fire that burst against her shield. 

Ron roared behind her, and her moment of distraction was all Dolohov needed. 

His cruciatus curse wrenched through her nerve endings and she screamed, dropping to the graveyard of broken furniture. The next thing she knew, there was hot breath in her ear and a palm pressed around her throat. 

“ _Avada Kedavra!_ ” through slitted eyes she saw an enraged Lucius Malfoy send a killing curse into the back of Rodolphus Lestrange, the latter distracted by her screams. His body hit the ground with a sickening crunch. 

Dolohov wasn’t done. Hermione’s eyes popped wide as his hand, still covered in the blood of Fenrir Greyback, groped at her breasts. He gave a sloppy lick to her ear. 

“Who knew that mudbloods tasted so sweet?” 

She threw an elbow back at him to no avail. He dodged and gripped her tighter, trapping her arms against his body. Her wand had clattered to the ground when the cruciatus hit. 

She could see Ron in her periphery, white as a sheet, blood rushing from a gouge in his abdomen. 

Draco was locked in a duel with Rabastan, the latter now fighting with a deadly edge as he danced around the bodies of his brother and sister-in-law. 

“Hmm, mudblood?” Dolohov began to rip at her blouse, buttons bouncing on the drawing room floor. “Did you like killing one of us?” He yanked hair from her scalp and he forced her to look at Bellatrix’s body. “Did you feel… _alive_?” 

Sweat poured down her back and she tasted blood from where she’d bitten her lip. 

Lucius was dragging someone to the perimeter. Narcissa was nearly immobile in his grasp, her lungs heaving, face contorted and turning blue. 

Dolohov turned her around violently, so that they were facing Harry and Ron. 

“ _Sectumsempra_!” Harry thundered, wand trained at the Death Eater who’d slipped in mid-fight. His curse connected soundly, and bloody bubbles began bursting from the man’s throat. 

Ron, his face drained of blood, collapsed onto the floor. 

“RON! HARRY!” Hermione screamed before Dolohov’s fist connected with her ribcage and she coughed blood. 

The Death Eater slammed her down by her neck onto the sticky drawing room floor and planted his burly foot firmly in the centre of her back. 

Splinters dug into her sternum and she tried to ignore the pain. Her head turned to the left. She couldn’t see her best friends. 

“Ooh! Potter’s got some fight left, has he? _Rictusempra!_ ” 

“ _Expelliarmus!_ ” She heard Harry’s attempt at disarming Dolohov leave his mouth before the Death Eater’s tickling charm connected. Harry’s eerie, disembodied and manic laughter made hackles rise. 

She could see the Malfoy men, dueling Rabastan in tandem, magic crackling around them like lightning. Lucius was sending nonverbal curse after nonverbal curse, while Draco sent a barrage of constant stunners against Lestrange’s shield. 

In the corner, Narcissa had gone still. 

Dolohov pressed down harder on Hermione, and she felt one of her ribs give way, followed by a sharp pain.

She cried out. 

Harry was attempting to cast through the onslaught of laughter, and finally managed a “ _Finite incantatem._ ” 

She watched as one of Rabastan’s stunners hit Draco on the chest and he was knocked out cold. A sinister hot and cold sensation flooded her mind, and though she was grateful for it, the emotion wasn’t hers. 

Lucius Malfoy was looking between her, Rabastan, and Draco with an expressionless countenance. 

“What? Your heir goes tits up and I rot your wife’s lungs from the inside out, Lucius?” Rabastan leered. “Is this what you wanted?” 

“Macnair is dead. Rodolphus is dead.” Lucius countered, distracting. 

“ _Hermione._ ” 

She started against Dolohov’s foot at the use of her given name, meeting Lucius's eyes when they were trained briefly on hers. 

“ _There is a wand not far behind your left hand._ ” 

“And who will be here to greet the Dark Lord?” Rabastan sensed the standoff. “Or will you admit what we both know?” 

The Death Eater ripped the sleeve of his shirt up, eye bulging with madness. The skin of his forearm was bare. 

“What do you want, Rabastan?” Lucius asked before looking at her again.

“ _Summon it. You’ll have to do it wandlessly. I believe you can do it.”_ Lucius’s consciousness washed over her like a shroud, egging her on. 

“At this point, I can’t even tell.” Rabastan moved out of her vision and kicked a groan out of someone on the ground. “Maybe I just want these filthy blood traitors to hurt.”

Ron! 

Hermione had thought him dead but he was still alive, and the thought filled her with joy. She focused her will power, focused her magic, on the spot behind her where Lucius had said the wand was. 

_Accio weapon!_ She thought, desperately. No avail. 

“ _Expelliarmus_!” 

Harry picked his moment to try to disarm Dolohov, who batted it away with a hollow laugh. 

“Come on, golden boy!” The Death Eater sneered. “If I didn’t know better I’d confuse you with your mum!” 

Dolohov reached down to grab Hermione's face, bending her neck higher off the ground. Hermione felt muscles in her jaw pop and give way. 

“ _Focus,”_ Lucius may as well have been whispering softly in her ear. His voice pulled her away from the immediate pain of her body. “ _It’s working. The wand is closer now, and you must kill Dolohov with it. Do not hesitate—”_

Rabastan strode over to her, realizing that neither Harry nor Lucius would do anything while Dolohov had her hostage. He leered in her face, smelling of rotten teeth and warm, cheap brandy. 

_Accio weapon!_ Her fingers clenched and unclenched around thin air. _Accio weapon!_

“Maybe I just want a taste of this mudblood.” He kicked her in the side and Hermione whimpered as another rib splintered. “Now that Rodolphus is worm food, you wouldn’t mind, would you Antonin?” 

_ACCIO WEAPON!_

Whether or not it was her distress or desperation or a combination of the two, Hermione felt her magic flex and ripple as Rabastan spat violently on her face and walked back toward Lucius. 

Her magic swelled and bent, and then—

An inhuman caterwauling rent the air from her far right, and Dolohov’s foot let up in surprise. A soggy squelch preceded what could only be described as a death wail, and then there was cool, thrumming metal in Hermione’s hand. 

She had one shot. 

The sword of Gryffindor was heavy, but Hermione was past the point of caring about death. Distracted, Antonin Dolohov had moved towards the sound, letting his gaze off her. She didn’t care about the wand any more. 

Using the last vestiges of her strength, the witch hauled herself to her feet, leaning heavily on the ornate sword. Without hesitation, Hermione brought the sword down in a desperate arc. It connected messily with the junction of Dolohov’s neck and shoulder. 

Hot, metallic blood burst across her face. 

It was not a clean strike, but the job was done. 

As she fell back to the floor, she registered the violent green light from behind her shoulder. Hermione’s back hit the ground, eyes impossibly heavy. 

With a detached horror, she registered the body of Griphook the goblin impaled on a cast iron coat rack. His rictus grin was covered in blood. His knobbly hand was still outstretched, as if he could have stopped the sword’s determined path into her worthy hand.

With a rattling exhale, she passed out. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Hope I could provide a brief respite from current events. 
> 
> Sorry to leave so many characters' fates unknown, I was approaching 5K and wanted to cut the chapter here. And hey, while I know Accio doesn't work on an animate object (RIP Griphook), I don't for a second believe that he would have released a goblin-made blade, even if it was summoned into an active battle.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work is unbeta'd, any mistakes are my own, and I'm certainly not making any money from this story.

Hermione peeled her eyes open against blinding light. 

The room wasn’t fluorescent bright. Nothing artificial assaulted her senses. Colorless morning light, perfect for curling up with a book, flooded in through twin windows. A dramatic high ceiling met in a point above her head. If she hadn’t spent the bulk of her adolescence in Gryffindor tower, she may not have recognised the space for what it was. 

She scanned her body. 

Hermione clenched toes first, then feet, calves, and thighs. Nothing too off there, aside from the expected soreness. When it was time to flex the muscles in her stomach and chest, she winced. 

_ Dolohov’s foot, pressing her ribs so far into her lungs that they cracked. The taste of copper and rot flooding her mouth as her face became trapped against Malfoy Manor’s thirsty floorboards.  _

She lifted her head up as far as it could go, catching a glimpse of Harry Potter at the end of her bed. 

Half-starved and fully exhausted, Harry’s eyes were closed blissfully. Hermione looked at his sleeping form and tried not to be jealous. She hadn’t slept that hard in months, if not years. A good half inch of stubble coated his jaw, and his messy hair fanned out atop her blankets. 

He looked clean. 

Upon lifting her hand, Hermione found that she too seemed well looked-after. No stubborn blood stains graced her nail beds. When she moved her neck there were no longer dank matts of filthy, curled hair from months on the run. 

What had happened to them? 

It seemed like only yesterday that they had been caught by Snatchers in the woods, but from the ache in her bones, Hermione could tell that she’d been lying prone for far longer than that. 

_ Swinging the sword with all of her might, connecting with the neck of her tormentor. Hermione was surprised at the euphoria she felt, euphoria that was quickly overtaken by exhaustion as she collapsed. _

They had fought. 

She remembered. Hermione had blown up a corpse. Summoned the sword of Gryffindor.  _ Ron. _ Ron might be dead. That part, she couldn’t remember, though she was fairly certain that Narcissa Malfoy and several Death Eaters had met their ends. 

The fact that she was breathing and out of immediate danger gave weight to the theory that they had won.

Hermione scanned the room again, this time with intent. Beyond Harry lay the windows. They were high enough up that the only thing she could see through them was the grey British sky. The room was small, hers and one other bed dominated most of the space. On her right was a small but solid-looking nightstand, stacked high with several papers. 

Hermione lunged. 

As a bookworm who hadn’t been afforded the luxury of a paper in months, the  _ Daily Prophet _ was irresistible. 

“ _ VOLDEMORT DEAD!”  _ proclaimed one with misaligned folds that had been clearly read through already. 

“ _ Shock rippled through Wizarding Europe over the weekend as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was found dead in central Austria. Nurmengard Castle, the site of Voldemort’s downfall, has long been the prison of defamed dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald. Grindelwald, who confessed his role in the murder to  _ The Daily Prophet,  _ had been held in his own fortress since his defeat at the hands of the late Albus Dumbledore in 1945. You know what they say folks, keep your friends close, keep your dark-magic-wielding enemies closer! Grindelwald has since been extradited to the UK and now awaits questioning and trial in Azkaban prison. For more, turn to page A8… _ ” 

Harry stirred at the end of her bed. Hermione discarded the paper hastily, looking for a newer print. 

“MINISTER FOR MAGIC PIUS THICKNESSE REMAINS IN OFFICE DESPITE STAY IN ST. MUNGO’S,” another headline read, this one covering the entire front page of the paper in dramatic block print. 

“ _ After a brief hospitalization on Thursday, Minister for Magic Pius Thicknesse has been granted health clearance and returned full time to the Ministry this morning. A representative for Mr. Thicknesse was unavailable for comment at the time of our inquiry. For public responses from Messirs Kingsley Shacklebolt, Arthur Weasley, and more, consider page A13.”  _

She flipped the pages ravenously. Was this today’s paper? Arthur and Kingsley were alive. Did Mr. Weasley know about Ron? 

_ Ron.  _

_ She remembered looking over at him briefly to see a huge gash in his abdomen. His hands were bloody, pressed against his body in an attempt to staunch the flow. He had been alive when she passed out,  _ Hermione thought.  _ He’d been kicked, hadn’t he? He’d groaned in pain.  _

Desperately rifling through pages, Hermione found the one that she wanted. 

“ _ To Whom It May Concern,  _

_ I, Kingsley Shacklebolt, call for an election for the position of Minister for Magic. These are unprecedented and unique times. The sudden demise of the Dark Lord Voldemort, and the subsequent revelations within Ministry staff have left our governing body in incapable and untrustworthy hands. Furthermore, I of the Ancestral House of Shacklebolt do implore Acting Minister Thicknesse to reopen the courtrooms of the Wizengamot. Preventing just trials only serves those who have something to hide.”  _

Hermione couldn’t miss Kingsley’s tone. It was that of a born and bred politician, just condescending and well spoken enough to convey a message of contempt between the written lines. She worried that his lack of subtlety would put a target on his back. 

Calling for an election was one thing, but openly painting Thicknesse as the “acting” minister was bold. Hermione knew that there was no way that Thicknesse wasn’t still being propped up by Voldemort’s followers, and would bet money that Kingsley knew it too. 

She scanned down further. 

_ “From Arthur Weasley,  _ _ Office for the Detection and Confiscation of Counterfeit Defensive Spells and Protective Objects, to Whom it May Concern,  _

_ I, as a senior Ministry employee, do call for an internal investigation as to the depth and reach of the late Dark Lord Voldemort’s infiltration into the Ministry of Magic. I second Mr. Shacklebolt’s call to reopen the courts of the Wizengamot to further this investigation, and propose that the archaic notion of “House Dues” for ancestral houses be waved from participation in the courts to promote a just democracy. I further invite the Ministry to investigate the post-war disappearances of important persons and offer to head that department myself.  _

_ Respectfully,  _

_ Arthur Weasley.”  _

Hermione scanned the rest of the paper quickly, but found nothing out of the ordinary besides the paper’s usual fluff. 

She looked again towards Harry, and was considering giving his tousled mane of hair a nudge with her foot when the sound of an apparition startled her with a crack. 

“Miss is awake!” 

A small house elf had appeared in the doorway with a tea tray of potions and fresh bandages. Hermione grimaced at the bandages and looked down at her blankets. 

“Oh, the Masters Malfoys will be excited to hear it,” the elf was continuing unaware. “They will be most pleased to hear it, oh yes, Doddy thinks so, yes.” 

Hermione did not miss the pluralisation. So both Lucius and Draco were unharmed and giving orders. She’d assumed as much of Lucius, in her memory he’d been unharmed physically in their battle against the Death Eaters, but Draco had been less of a clear bet. 

Briefly, she wondered at the fact that she’d stopped classifying the Malfoy men as Death Eaters in her head. 

“Doddy, was it?” Hermione’s voice was gravelly from disuse. 

At the elf’s enthusiastic nod asked, “Is this the most recent  _ Prophet _ ?” Hermione held up the front page detailing Thicknesse’s stay in St. Mungo’s. 

“Oh yes, missus. Doddy has been bringing the papers to young miss everyday at Lord Malfoy’s request.” The elf walked over to Harry’s prone form and started shaking him gently. “Most days Mister Potter reads them aloud to you, says he knows you’d want to know, whatever that means.” 

Harry jolted awake and reached reflexively for his wand under Doddy’s ministrations. 

“Geroff me, I— Hermione!” 

“Harry!” 

She was engulfed suddenly in the arms of her best friend and the world made sense for a moment in time. 

He pushed her shoulders back far enough that he could see her face. Crystal green eyes searched hers with intent.  “How’re you feeling? Do you need anything, want anything? The healers didn’t think you’d wake up for a couple of days so I haven’t had ti—” 

“Harry,” Hermione interrupted his rambling before it devolved into nonsense. “Did Ron—?” the words  _ make it _ got caught in her throat.

Her friend stiffened markedly, before collapsing against her shoulder. He hugged her tightly before whispering in her ear. 

“No.” 

Hermione had thought that she’d scream. 

She felt like she  _ should _ scream. Merlin knew she'd had plenty of time to envision the deaths of her friends over the last year. Hermione thought she’d be better prepared for the news. 

The reality was so much sicker than her imagination.

Hermione felt Harry’s hand on her, felt him looking at her, but all of the sudden his face was farther away and the back of her head was pressed against a pillow. All she could see was the ceiling. 

All she could  _ think _ about was the ceiling, and the muffled tone of what must have been Harry’s voice crying out in alarm above her. 

Were the rivets in the crossbeams of the tower above her iron or steel? Were iron and steel such different materials that she’d know the difference with her naked eye? She was sure that whichever were the most expensive were the ones above her—

_ Ron’s full cheeks, puffed out and full of steak and kidney pie. The way his nose had crinkled every time he pulled a sweater on over his head _ . 

The crossbeams themselves had to be oak, or maybe mahogany. She ruled out cedar and pine, they were too flexible and susceptible to water—

_ The way his shoulders fit underneath her palms when she dug her thumbs into them. The sound of Ron’s laugh, the smell of his skin after quidditch practice when he’d throw an arm around her, his obvious bias towards his mother’s cooking, unless, of course, it was her sandwiches _ . 

Vaguely, Hermione was aware of a keening, desperate sound that ricocheted around the small space. She gathered her wits to call for Doddy, Doddy who served the Malfoy family but for some reason was and had been taking care of her, the mudblood witch. 

_The joy that had erupted in his older brothers as "Weasley, Ronald" was sorted into Gryffindor. She'd envied him_ _their boundless love even then._

The little elf’s gargantuan ears bobbed in her vision, and then Hermione was being hoisted, recognizing the choking wails that cut the air were spilling from her own throat. 

A potion tipped into her mouth and Hermione leaned into oblivion. 

  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A shorter chapter, but important and full of pain nonetheless. Hoping you're all staying indoors and able to take care of your families. 
> 
> Thanks for looking.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Posting another short chapter only a couple days after the last. They were both short but I felt the need to break them up. Enjoy!

Hermione drifted. 

It was the easiest way to describe the abyss of potions, spells, and sleep that occupied her first week at Malfoy Manor after Voldemort’s sudden downfall. 

She vacillated between waking, being violently awake, and scanning through the _Prophet_ whenever it came. Harry had stopped reading it to her now that she was up more often than he was. 

Doddy and another house elf named Milsy would alternate between giving her potions and performing spells on the arm that Bellatrix had injured. The witch had crudely cut the word ‘mudblood’ into the soft tissue of her forearm, but after their ministrations it had faded significantly. 

If she’d had her wand, it would have been enough to hide with a glamour. _Had they taken it?_ _Were she and Harry prisoners now?_

The only glimpse she’d had of either of the Malfoys was through the tower windows as they’d levitated Narcissa’s coffin into a large marble mausoleum. 

Hermione had watched the somber procession without joy. Lucius’s long mane of hair was bound back into a ponytail with a thick tie. Draco’s was smoothed over, much like how he'd worn it at Hogwarts. They had interred her quickly, then stood back while house elves floated hundreds of large white flowers inside after her. 

When the large marble slab covered the entrance and they turned to the house, Hermione noted Draco’s red-rimmed eyes and Lucius’s sunken cheeks. 

That had been two days ago. 

“Harry?” she began, leafing through another _Daily Prophet_ that was filled with distracting, inconsequential fluff pieces. 

Her best friend looked up, hair falling in his face. 

“What happens now?” 

It was a question that she’d been running through her head since the first time she woke up in the tower room. _What was the state of the Order? Did people know that they were alive?_

She was driving herself insane in the small room, slowly but surely. 

Harry shrugged, and retreated further into himself. Ron’s death was taking a greater toll on him. He often didn’t get out of bed, and when he did, it was only to join her in hers. Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, was not really living. 

Hermione couldn’t sit still. 

Swinging her legs over the edge of the bed, she pulled on a large rosy dressing gown that was the only clothing she’d seen since waking up after the battle. She was grateful for that. Her own clothes had been caked in weeks of camping dirt and saturated with Dolohov’s blood. 

Hermione gripped the heavy door knob with a sweaty palm and pushed it open quickly. 

Nothing happened. 

She’d assumed there would be an alert: the crack of a house elf’s apparition or a caterwauling charm at the least. Hermione flushed with embarrassed rage. 

Perhaps they weren’t prisoners after all. She started down the stairs.

Had anyone proposed it a week ago, the thought of Hermione Granger descending a tower at Malfoy Manor in bare feet and what could have been one of Narcissa Malfoy’s old dressing gowns would have brought her to manic laughter—but here she was—filled with an indignance that surprised her. 

What sort of family made such rash, unpredictable decisions? And if they weren’t prisoners, why not return their wands? 

She’d felt bereft for close to a week now, naked without her wand or any sense of purpose. 

Hermione dropped off the last step and into an ornate hallway with thick, dark wood. She tried the door to her right. It was locked, and she thudded against it gracelessly. With a huff she tried the next, only to find its fillagreed handle equally immobile. 

Blood boiling with pent up frustration, she raced from door to door, bare feet slapping along the way. It was as if the hall was playing a trick on her, locking each door just before she touched it and Hermione growled in anger. 

At the last door in the hallway, Hermione decided she’d try to force it open, which resulted in her careening into the room at full momentum and skidding to a halt in some sort of study. 

Lucius Malfoy raised a pale eyebrow at her from across the room, and any breath that she’d recovered _whooshed_ right back out of her lungs. 

“Miss Granger.” he acknowledged, and then resumed staring out the window. 

Hermione cupped the back of her head, elbows wide, and drank him in. Reclining in a lush window seat, Lucius Malfoy was the most unkempt that she’d ever seen him. A loose fitting white shirt hung off of his frame, and he was wearing dark trousers that may have been simple cotton. Blonde hair hung around his shoulders, devoid of its usual luster, and a significant five o’clock shadow sat underneath sunken grey eyes. 

“Where is my wand?” Hermione asked plainly. 

He pinned her with a cool stare and she did her best not to look away. All of the rage that she’d harbored during her chaotic tear down the hallway morphed into pity of its own accord and she cursed her large Gryffindor heart. He was clearly grieving too. She’d watched him bury his wife with her own eyes. 

“Tallie?” Lucius exhaled into the room.

With a crack the elf appeared, looking significantly better for wear than when she’d come back from lying to Death Eaters outside the manor’s gates. 

“Will the Master be wanting supper now?” Tallie babbled immediately. “Master Lucius needs to eat, Tallie has seen the full plates the others is bringing back to the kitchen—” 

Lucius cut her off as he stood, revealing an empty brandy snifter that he’d been holding on his other side. 

“Do fetch Miss Granger her belongings, and cease this inane chatter over food.” His voice was dangerously level, only the hearty pour of brown liquor betrayed him. 

Tallie squeaked, noticing Hermione, and apparated with a swift curtsy. 

Hermione pulled the dressing gown tighter around herself as she waited. Lucius drank liberally before speaking with a rasp.

“I trust that you find yourself in an excellent state of recovery.” 

Thinking of her arm, Hermione nodded. 

“Where is Ron’s body?” she blurted. 

It was another question that had been occupying her waking hours. They’d buried Narcissa. She’d seen no sign of Ron Weasley.

“Where it belongs.” The Malfoy patriarch returned to the window seat and sat down with a suspicious amount of poise. “With his family. It would seem that Mr. Potter neglected to tell you.” 

Harry had been a shell of his former self each time they’d been awake at the same time. It was as if once she’d recovered and proved healthy, he had allowed himself to slide into a dark mental fog. 

“Harry isn’t himself at the moment.” 

“None of us are ourselves at the moment.” Lucius barked a hollow, cruel laugh. Their eyes caught, and Hermione felt the now familiar pressure of his legilimency as he drove recklessly into her mind. 

_She was standing, but taller, seeing through Lucius Malfoy’s eyes. She saw her own body, slumped at an odd angle and doused in hot blood. Harry’s enraged eyes. Draco’s hollow ones. A black cavern in Narcissa’s chest from where Lestrange’s necrotic curse had connected while Hermione’s—_ she shook her head— _while Lucius’s back had been turned. Weasley’s crop of red hair on the other side of the room and corpses. More corpses than survivors_. 

“Get— _the fuck_ —out!” 

Hermione’s outburst was accompanied by the crack of Tallie’s returning apparition. 

Lucius made a clucking sound in the back of his throat that Hermione imagined Malfoys were taught at birth. 

He was standing again, moving towards her with a distinct sway, and Hermione admitted to herself that Lucius Malfoy was quite impressively drunk. 

“But Miss Granger,” he countered with arrogance as Tallie shoved Hermione’s bag into her outstretched hands. “You extended the offer into your mind so willingly last time.” 

He pulled out a wand that must have been up his sleeve and made to wave it as her fingers scrambled against her own inside her beaded bag. Despite his fluctuating alliances, Lucius Malfoy was, and had always been an accomplished dark wizard. 

“Consider it revoked. Different circumstances, Malfoy.” she spat at him, leveling her wand at his unfair, symmetrical face. 

To his credit, he looked surprised. 

“What fire, Miss Granger.” He was menacing up close, and the tip of her wand pressed against his broad chest as he stepped forward into it. “A true Gryffindor after all. I suppose that explains that surprising business with the sword.” 

Lucius waved his wand off to the side, and a book flew into his outstretched hand from a small shelf in the corner. He held it out to her with what could only be described as a smirk before retreating. 

Hermione’s heart was still racing while he turned his back. Her fight or flight response had been conditioned after months on the run. 

“ _A Guide to Advanced Occlumency_ by Maxwell Barnett?” she read aloud, flipping the cover back and forth in her hands. 

Lucius had returned to his desk and was once again fingering the decanter. He gave an undignified grunt in acknowledgement; Hermione realized for the first time that he, too, was barefoot. 

“Indeed. You’d do well to study it carefully. Care for a drink?” 

Still mulling over the cover, his question took her unawares. She resisted the urge to thumb through the pages in her hand and cursed him for his shifting moods, but stepped forward nonetheless. She couldn’t remember how long it had been since she’d had a proper drink. 

“I don’t know what to think of you,” Hermione admitted while accepting the glass. Lucius had long hands, and the type of fingers that her grandmother had always likened to a pianist’s. “I don’t know what to think of this. How have you not been raided by the Ministry yet?” 

He gestured to an armchair and she sat with a straight spine. 

“To not being raided by the Ministry.” Lucius lifted a glass in her direction sardonically, cheersing her. 

She drank, and then fixed him under her expectant gaze. He sighed. 

“I gave them what they wanted, Miss Granger.” He took another sip. “Nothing more, nothing less. In return, I hope that they will assist me further down the line, or at minimum, resist sabotaging me outright.” 

She scoffed. “I find it hard to believe that the Ministry is content with Harry and I being held in Malfoy Manor. You’re evading the question.”

Lucius sneered. “The Ministry is a puppet show, with idiots at the strings. It was your Order that showed up here looking for blood.” 

_At least the Order is still functioning_ , she thought to herself. _Harry and I will have somewhere to go when we leave here at last._

A half-amused, half-irritated glint caught in Lucius’s grey eyes but he said nothing, seemingly content to entice her with half-answers while he got progressively drunker. Hermione tried a different tactic. 

“What do you want from me?” 

“Assistance, when the time comes. You’re _almost_ as well known as I am.” 

Hermione felt a flutter of triumph in her chest at his admission. She took another sip of the brown liquor in her glass, feeling the alcohol start to numb her insides nicely. 

“What sort of assistance?” she shot. 

“Social.” 

“You’re quite drunk.” 

“Yes,” Lucius agreed. “For nearly three days now. If I stop, it may literally kill me.” 

“If you continue, someone else might.” 

Hermione shrugged, and Lucius chuckled low in his throat. 

“What did you give them? The Order?” she asked. 

Lucius either considered her, or made a great show of doing so, before he answered. She couldn’t tell what was genuine. The man was impossible to read while sober, and he was maintaining a level of stoicism despite his intoxication. 

“I returned to them their dead. I offered them the corpses of several Death Eaters in good faith but they declined, much to the chagrin of my elves.” Lucius paused, flinching into his glass. 

“And?” It wasn’t enough. Hermione knew that there was no way that Arthur or Remus would have left her or Harry here for nothing. 

Lucius sneered at her, but continued. 

“I submitted my memories of the battle that took my wife’s life. I assured them that you and Potter were in need of medical assistance, and that your physical states were too delicate for relocation. I entered an Unbreakable Vow with Kingsley Shacklebolt that I would prevent any harm from befalling either of you while you remain in Malfoy Manor.” 

Hermione choked on her drink. 

“I don’t believe you. _You?_ An Unbreakable Vow?” Hermione stifled the urge to laugh at the thought. 

“What can I say, Miss Granger. Dying is easy. It’s politics that are hard work.” Lucius finished his drink with relish and set the empty down beside him. “The Order has greater concerns than wondering if I’m an effective enough babysitter. Planning a coup takes time” 

“That’s their plan? Are you certain?” Hermione’s excitement ratcheted up a notch. She’d been following the papers looking for any mention of Pius Thicknesse after his brief hospitalisation, but the ink had run dry several days ago.

Lucius ignored her, eyes once more on the alcohol. A blind woman could see that he was letting the liquor take over and Hermione got the sense that he’d succumb to sleep soon.

“You have your wand.” It was another veiled non-answer, but it was all that he offered as he moved back towards his original window seat. “Best leave now, Miss Granger. The Manor can be eerie after dark.” 

Several long moments passed as Hermione contemplated him. Sunset lighting was beginning to flood in through the windows behind Lucius, catching his long hair and lighting it incandescently. She vowed internally to return tomorrow, earlier in the day. 

Maybe she’d ask Milsy for a hangover potion before forcing him to talk. 

She downed the rest of her drink and scourgified it neatly. Head spinning with new information, Hermione gathered her bag and new book and fled the study, unaware that Lucius Malfoy’s molten grey eyes trailed her all the way through the door. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope you enjoyed some lucius/hermione interaction! Any mistakes are my own. Thanks for looking!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Probably a good time to mention that, despite my wishes, I am no beloved titan of fan-fiction with an update schedule. Life is insane, take care of yourselves. All grammatical errors are my own.

The first thing Hermione did in the morning was shower. The second, was to send a patronus to Remus Lupin.

As her otter drifted away over the grounds of Malfoy Manor, she glanced at Harry. Her best friend was sleeping fitfully. He’d been up for hours with nightmares. Hermione could never bring herself to wake him.

She sat on the edge of the bed, surveying the tower walls and waited. Even after several days, Hermione still wore the same soft pink dressing gown she’d woken up in after the battle. It was too large, hanging off of her malnourished frame, but she’d never bothered to memorize trivial things like advanced fashion charms.

The months on the road had been hard. Then she’d been subject to torture. And a battle. Uncertainty over the future and guilt about the past drove her to pace the floor of the room, wand in hand. Surely, Remus wouldn’t leave her waiting too long.

_ She remembered swinging the sword with strength that she couldn't have still possessed. Her ribs were cracked. One or several of them had pierced her lungs, and yet… _

_ The glorious, splattering symphony of Dolohov’s blood crested over her shoulder and onto her face. She buried the sword into the delicate bridge of flesh between his torso and head. _

_ Hermione passed out, but not before she’d smiled. _

She shook herself.

Things were different now. The Hermione that had killed her tormentor was certainly not the one who sat waiting for a reply from the Order of Phoenix, pacing around a room in Malfoy Manor.

She fell back into a chair with a groan.

In her mind, they read like a macabre list of characters. Harry, the chosen one, beside himself with grief. Ron, her first friend, dead and gone. Draco, a former nemesis, shrunken by the death of his mother. And perhaps strangest of all, Lucius. The high-ranking Death Eater, apparently sworn to uphold a lifelong oath to prevent her harm.

Hermione wasn’t sure which epithet to assign herself yet.

The sudden materialisation of a silvery patronus consoled her and Hermione focused on Remus’ ethereal wolf. His disembodied voice cut through.

_ "I cannot tell you how overjoyed I am to hear from you. Last I saw, you were covered in fresh blood. Lucius, the big snake— he was so irritated at our fretting that he volunteered his memories just to save time. Dolohov, Hermione? With the bloody sword of Gryffindor? We knew you had it in you, but you surprised the hell out of us. Sirius and Mad-Eye would have been proud…” _

The patronus fell away and Hermione let out an indignant squawk at how little information it had contained until she spotted another wolf in the distance. It wisped up and continued:

_ "Sorry about that. As long winded as ever, I’m afraid. As for your immediate concerns— you are quite safe where you are at the moment. In fact, with the general public unaware of your location, it may be best to stay out of the papers as long as possible. And although it pains me to say it, we need what Malfoy’s offering us— I won’t elaborate over patronus, but don’t worry. I’ll be there later this afternoon." _

The patronus dissipated without fanfare and Hermione dropped her head to her hands. The messages were intentionally vague to a certain degree.

She was surprised to hear that Lucius had volunteered his memories voluntarily. The fact stuck in her teeth like a seed, irritatingly present. The way he’d phrased it yesterday had made her assume that he’d been pressed for the information. 

And what was Lucius Malfoy offering the Order that they wanted so desperately? 

The questions swamped her mind in a maelstrom of uncertainty.

After being on the run for months, the idea of sitting and waiting for Remus or anyone else to arrive as if for an appointment was laughable. They’d been so frantic for so long. That normal life had gone on without them seemed feverishly out of place. She didn’t know how to relax anymore, didn’t know how to stop surviving.

Her head hurt.

Hermione’s brain throbbed at the prospect of their new reality. Voldemort had been the enemy for so long, but was now reduced to hideous memory and few bits of maimed soul. The Malfoys had been the enemies for just as long, and now Hermione sat in their manor, oscillating back and forth in an old rocking chair.

She looked over at the occlumency book that Lucius had given her where it lay on a small side table.  _ A Guide to Advanced Occlumency _ . Hermione couldn’t deny the itch in her fingers and flipped it open to the introduction. 

_ "Of all the cerebral magicks, few are as ancient and revered as that of Occlumency. Throughout history, practitioners of magic have passed the skills to navigate the mind through their families, hoping to further the practice in new generations. Between your hands lay the secrets of Occlumency, for the first time written and condensed in this most singular volume. In order to draw back the curtains of your conscience…” _

The flowery prose continued for another page or two before she flipped past a practical table of contents and to the first chapter entitled “Visualising the Mind". 

_ “It cannot be understated that a firm grasp over one’s mental faculties even in situations of intense duress,”  It began. “is absolutely vital to any practitioner of Occlumency. _

_ Imagine for a moment, a box filled with objects. Once shaken, it can be incredibly difficult to reorganize the objects in such a box. The same can be said for the mind. For this reason, the primary lesson for those who wish to master this magical skill is stillness. Only once the mind is unthreatened by potential change can more practical lessons begin.” _

Hermione curled up in the rocking chair and read on, sparing an occasional worried glance at Harry whenever he groaned in his sleep.

Some time later, patience for Remus and the Order’s arrival wearing thin, Hermione rested on a small balcony that she’d found while aimlessly pacing the Manor. She had left the tower after Doddy brought lunch in, tiptoeing past the room that she’d learned to be Lucius’ study. She turned the corner, carrying on past a long row of portraits.

Hermione suspected that they’d all been silenced when she bent closer to inspect them and realized that the majority of the haughtily-dressed figures were screaming soundlessly at her presence.

The balcony’s wrought-iron pressed against her hands as she took in the grounds. Immense swaths of forest bordered the manor to one side. For the hundredth time since retrieving her wand, Hermione considered apparating away.

Voldemort was dead, but his horcruxes were still out there.

They’d been given an incredible window of opportunity. Last time it had taken Voldemort three years to gain a physical body after Professor Quirrell died, but only because the diary plot was unsuccessful. The inevitability of torn pieces of Voldemort’s soul lurking somewhere on the continent in any number of dark objects made her lightheaded.

She had to tell Remus and the rest of the Order.

Her heart ached at the thought of Arthur and Molly Weasley. She regretted not being there when they had heard of Ron’s death.

She regretted a great many things. 

A gust of wind picked the hem of her dressing gown from where it fluttered near her knees, and Hermione adjusted balance against the metal balcony railing. Feeling the iron press coldly into her stomach, she trained her eyes on the ground far below.

Lucius Malfoy’s slurred words from the night before ran through her mind.

_ “That I would prevent any harm from befalling either of you—” _

_ “—an Unbreakable Vow with Kingsley Shacklebolt.” _

Was he even telling the truth?

Hermione considered the ground once again, noting that the height was more than enough for her to dive off and still have time to cast a cushioning charm mid-air. Would the Vow count this as harm? Her chest constricted at the thrill of it as she tried to calculate the risk that she’d fail to cast the charm in time.

She didn’t let herself second guess it. Calling upon her reserves of Gryffindor courage, she gripped her wand and thrust her torso back over the ledge.

Where she expected a freefall over the ramparts, she received a burning yank on her calves and an enraged Lucius Malfoy growling in her ear.   


“Are you absolutely—” he manhandled her back from the railing that she’d been intent on spilling over. “— out of your fucking mind?”

Hermione’s chest heaved at the prompt turn of events as she raced to file away the new truisms. He  _ was  _ compelled to prevent harm from coming to her, and her intent didn’t seem to matter.

Lucius’ eyes flashed to hers and Hermione had the decency to blush a little bit. His face was covered in fresh shaving cream and he wore a robe that revealed a sliver of pale chest. He banished the cream with an irritated flick of his wand and loomed over her, self-righteous in rage.

“I did not assume,  _ Ms. Granger _ , that I would so quickly regret confiding in you about my Vow.”

His hands were digging into her arms where he’d placed them after yanking her back from the edge. There was a manic quality in his steely gaze, and his eyes moved constantly over her face and body like he was unable to calm the excess energy radiating through his veins as a result of the Vow’s magical compulsion.

Despite that, he looked more sober than Lucius in her recent memory.

“Forgive me my curiosity,  _ Lord Malfoy _ ,” she finally returned, elongating the sounds in his title much the same as he’d done with those in hers. Her pupils tightened. “You can’t be surprised that I don’t trust you.”

His thin composure broke. He rolled his eyes and shoved away from her, seething. “Imagine for  _ an instant _ , Granger, a scenario in which your death gains me anything save a greater target on my back.”

“Which element of, ‘I don’t trust you,’ did you not comprehend?”

Hermione’s magic crackled around her as she stood up to him. One battle fought together did not absolve Lucius Malfoy of his sins and she was sick of taking his angst lying down.

“Whether you trust or despise me matters little as long as you’re capable of doing both at once.” He retorted.

Hermione felt herself sneer in indignation. “We’ll see.”

He leveled a deadly look in her direction and Hermione took a perverse pleasure in being able to so thoroughly ruffle the Malfoy patriarch's feathers. Nothing had been in her control like this since before the Snatchers had caught them the previous week.

“Hmm.” Her victorious mood was short-lived. “Allow me to clarify our positions.”

Lucius raised her chin up until their gazes met and once more, his thoughts enveloped her mind.

_ A flash of white-hot compulsion travelled up his spine accompanied by a vision—Her body, wrinkled silk, distorted and broken on the grass below the balcony. He looked over his hands as the heart-stopping lurch of the Vow killed him on his own balcony, large fingers white-knuckled on the railing and a moment too late. _

She protested against the onslaught, trying to drive him back from inside her head.

_ Through the bright lights there were many faces of the Wizengamot, the iron courtroom bars—  yes, the memories were still fresh—  one dementor slid past the next, nudging the one that had been slowly leeching off of him for days now— _

Hermione fought again to shake Lucius’s thoughts from her mind but he was punishingly insistent.

_ Voldemort’s fetid breath in his ear—  Merlin, he hated how his wand looked in the Dark Lord’s hand—  the endearing wisp of hair that he’d always pushed back from Narcissa’s face was limp, stuck to her skull and drenched in sweat as the Dark Lord sent another Cruciatus curse into her back— _

Stillness— Hermione remembered suddenly. The book he’d given her seemed far away when the man himself was deep in her mind’s eye.

_ Draco clutched against him, his son’s hands scrabbling desperately against his bloody waistcoat as the two were left alone with Narcissa’s body— the Order had come and gone and he felt an untenable uncertainty… _

It was no use. Each of his memories was horrible, sensory, and far too vivid for a man who’d spent the last several days drunk. By the time he retreated, Hermione was bracing her forearms against the manor, breathing fast.

“ _ Why , _ ” she seethed between heaves, “do you insist on doing that?”

Silence. She’d known he wouldn’t answer.

“Wait for your pathetic Order or leave when you like, but  _ do not  _ bring me down with you, Ms. Granger. Apparition won’t be a problem.” His voice snaked over her shoulder.

Hermione spat in the general direction of his feet and ignored him, feeling nauseous from the legilimency. She’d considered it. Last night after Harry had finally exhausted himself, she’d picked up her wand and nearly apparated away.

She hadn’t. 

Hermione needed vital information before she could decide where to apparate, and had resigned herself to sending a Patronus in the morning. 

“Why am I here?” She lashed out, resenting her cage. “Why is everyone and their bloody mum telling me that Malfoy Manor is the safest place to be?”

Lucius laughed, actually laughed at her, and Hermione resisted the urge to raise her head in order to catch the expression on his face. “You can’t be serious.”

She waited, wanting to hear him say it. At her silence, he continued.

“You’re keyed to the Manor’s heartstone, and while you are here, it’s Lord is compelled to protect you or die.” Lucius’s voice was lazy and a touch mocking. “If you don’t recall, I can conjure that memory for you too.”

She’d already known, but her heart hammered double-time when their eyes met again.

“There she is,” he mocked. “Brightest witch of her age.”

_ Stillness _ . Hermione felt a familiar hate flare between her temples but she refused to rise to his bait.

“I’ve never seen a heartstone like that before.” The admission fell from her lips. “I read about them in fifth year History of Magic, but you can’t count on most wizarding homes to have them— certainly not ones so active.”

“No,” at the change of subject, he suddenly sounded every bit the academic she suspected he might be. “I don’t suppose you would have. You’ll find, Ms. Granger—"

“ _ Ms. Granger , _ ” Hermione sneered, “Come off it, Malfoy.” She objected to the switch in his polite cadence, that hypocritically foul manner of speaking-while-condescending that riddled pureblood speech patterns.

“— that Malfoy manor is far from any  _ ordinary  _ wizarding dwelling.” He finished.

Hermione turned to fix him with a glare for the first time since he’d barged into her mind but was surprised to find his back turned with hands grasping the railing, much how they had been in the panicked memory he’d cast.

“Unique.” She huffed, irritated. “Yours are certainly the first racist portraits I’ve had the pleasure of avoiding.”

Lucius made an indelicate noise. “Liar.”

She bristled, drawing fighting breath before he continued.

“Unless Walburga’s portrait at Grimmauld was considerably less outspoken than the witch herself, you do exaggerate.”

He turned, meeting her narrowed eyes with a smirk.

“Don’t forget,  _ Hermione _ , that this war began long before you and your friends were born into it.” 

“You knew about Grimmauld?” The knowledge sent Hermione into a chaotic spin, her mind whirring at such an obvious oversight. “Of course you did.”

“The ancestral seat of House Black. I attended many events there throughout the seventies, particularly while courting Narcissa,” his gaze softened incrementally, but Hermione pretended not to notice.

“Why didn’t—"

He cut her off rudely.

“After Walburga died, it stayed empty for years. Orion and Cygnus were long dead, and Narcissa had no use for it. To what end?” Lucius paused to draw breath. “The Dark Lord was dead, Bellatrix lay rotting in Azkaban. Merlin knows, Andromeda couldn’t have been bothered.”

Hermione’s mind played catch up.

“And with Regulus dead, until Sirius’ escape…” she mused.

“We were fools, of course, to not prepare for an alternative. Imagine my surprise when one day, the place was inaccessible,” Lucius spoke drily, “Sirius Black had done the impossible. And the enchantments— it was as if no one could see it, but we all knew it was there.”

“Dumbledore.” Hermione provided knowingly.

“Indeed.”

Hermione was surprised but encouraged by his strange, forthcoming nature, and met his gaze with obvious expectation.

“Bellatrix was certain that by killing Sirius, Grimmauld would recognize her as its rightful heir.”

Hermione snorted. “Rest assured, the reality was a nasty shock for Kreacher, as well.”

Lucius stopped, considering her, his cold eyes flitting about her face and their position on the balcony.

The grounds were immaculate over the railing, no doubt due to the diligence of the Malfoy house elves. Large manicured lawns gave no hint to the dark magic that had long-inundated the estate, and the mausoleum’s white marble slabs shone despite a weak noon sun.

Her mind spinning down the new avenue Lucius had provided, Hermione was struck by the urge to research the history of the First Wizarding War. There was no more uncomfortable feeling than unpreparedness, and Hermione possessed that in droves.

_ Maybe if you’d planned their positions better, Ron would be alive and there wouldn’t be a lifeless shell upstairs named Harry Potter. _

The resurgence of the guilty internal monologue that so often threatened to overwhelm her was accompanied by a rapid and specific wave of nausea so sharp that Hermione lunged to grasp the railing again.

She forced herself to take deep breaths through her discomfort, waiting for the sensations to pass.

Behind her, Lucius cleared his throat.

“Ah. For that I do apologize.”

“For what?” She gave a short bark back.

“Earlier, we discussed the manor’s heartstone,” Lucius’s drawl reached her ears. “I’m afraid the protective benefits of the connection are accompanied by rather unfortunate physical symptoms.”

Hermione felt the temper that he’d briefly distracted her from return.

“How often?”

“Whenever the wards are questioned. Your beloved Order is here.”

Lucius’s words dovetailed with the abrupt crack of his apparition and Hermione grimaced.

Eager to see familiar faces, she disapparated painfully, with a much better idea as to why the Malfoys had always worn such unpleasant looks on their faces.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My apologies to the trans community for all of JKR's hate and bullshit. You are loved.


	6. Chapter 6

Hermione apparated into the manor’s entrance hall where Tallie was awaiting the Order’s arrival. She grimaced, experiencing a leftover twinge from the heartstone.

“Young miss enjoys her stay so far?” Tallie inquired with a sidelong blink.

Hermione wrung her hands with daily frustration. “It's been—” she broke off, unsure if she felt like upsetting the proud elf. “I’ve been accommodated.”

Tallie’s ears wiggled proudly. “Tallie is glad, young miss. Ever— ever since Mistress Narcissa—”

The sentence ended in a pitiful chirp. Hermione struggled to comfort the elf when she began to cry, her knobby fingers covering eyes newly wet with tears. She dropped a hesitant hand onto Tallie’s shoulder.

“There, there,” Hermione began, taking a knee. “I’m sure that your old Mistress loved you very much.”

Far from soothing the small elf, Hermione’s words caused Tallie to wail uncontrollably and her thin frame shook with pitiful sobs. The witch’s eyes widened.

“Is there anything I can do— oh!”

Hermione’s question was interrupted by a heavy sounding thud.

Tears still leaking, Tallie tried to dry her eyes with the corner of her outfit and waved long fingers at the door, an enchanted, gothic monstrosity that Hermione was suddenly grateful for.

The doors swung open into the entrance hall, revealing a familiar trio that she hadn’t seen in months. Her heart surged into her throat.

“Wotcher, Hermione!”

“Tonks!”

An absurdly pregnant Nymphadora Tonks stood hand in hand with Remus Lupin. The couple broke apart as Hermione rushed closer. The witch’s swollen abdomen pressed against Hermione’s rib cage when they wrapped arms around another. Arthur paced not too far behind, looking for all intents and purposes like he’d rather linger outside the manor than move inside it.

“Y-yous—you must be coming inside now,” Tallie stuttered, still misty-eyed and waving the group further on. “Master Lucius is wanting everyone in as quickly as possible!”

Arthur grimaced at Tallie’s words, ever suspicious of Lucius Malfoy’s intentions, but the bereaved father allowed himself to be ushered inside. Tonks fell back, whispering inaudible comforts into his ear. 

Remus rolled his eyes at Tallie but compiled. “Afternoon, Hermione.”

She beamed, glad to be among friends once more despite such singular circumstances.

“We brought these for you, as requested.” Remus dropped a hand to her shoulder as they walked, drawing her attention. Her old professor held out the knapsack he’d been shouldering beneath his worn traveller’s robes. “They’re certainly not posh, but they’ll do.”

She rifled its contents briefly, eyes softening in gratitude.

“Thank you.” 

“Hermione...”

She spun after Arthur mumbled her name, catching a pained flash in Tonk’s eye. She was struck by the steady reminder of Ron’s death where it was written on his aging face. When he wrapped his arms around her, Hermione shook, able for a moment to imagine that his lanky Weasley frame belonged to the person she wished she’d gotten a chance to say goodbye to.

“Molly and I have been so worried about you.”

“I’m the one that should have been worried about you, Mr. Weasley, I—”

He interrupted her. “We’re managing. It seems impossible most days, but it’s what Ron would want.”

Hermione didn’t feel like she could give a response that didn’t fall shallow. With death becoming so normal, what could one say? She was a killer herself now, and the necessity of her appointment as such did little to belie the uneasiness with which she wielded it.

“Was there a funeral?”

“At the Burrow. Right—” he cleared his throat to continue. “—right after. We couldn’t wait, not after we learned Voldemort had died, not knowing what our next days would look like.”

His voice broke. “I’m sorry, Hermione.”

“For what?” 

She was trying to squash the pang of dual loss that she felt. She hadn’t gotten to hold Ron's hand, and any respects she needed to pay, she’d never be able to say to his face.

Arthur seemed unsure how to put his words. “It felt wrong, not having you or Harry there in the end.”

“I’d like to see it,” she began, feeling useless. “Ron’s grave, that is.”

Arthur nodded and gave her a fatherly squeeze before stepping back, but the forced smile on his face didn’t match the hollowness in his eyes.

The group kept walking, this time down a side corridor with more silenced portraits of blondes with long faces.

“We’re glad you’re unharmed,” Tonks sidled back over when Hermione walked alone. “When Voldemort died, well— it's been a harrowing time to say the least. Malfoy reports that Harry is near-catatonic most days. Merlin— it’s bloody good to see your face, Hermione.”

“Reports?” Hermione asked, curious as to Lucius’s involvement.

“Tallie and Doddy, we takes good care of the young heroes,” Tallie interrupted the witches in her shrill, proud voice. “Milsy helps when she isn’t after Master Draco.”

“Bet you took bloody good care of Voldemort, too.” Remus muttered under his breath.

“Malfoy has been feeding the Order a stream of information since the night Voldemort died,” was his response to Hermione’s unanswered question.

Hermione tried to not let her shock show on her face. She’d assumed the Vow was the extent of his involvement, as deadly and effective as it was. The many contradictory things she knew about Lucius Malfoy flashed in her mind.

“What sort of information?” 

“His intel has helped us understand the major players in the Ministry— potential Death Eater loyalists that didn’t flee as soon as their marks started to fade, society members who claim to be neutral but supported Voldemort financially, the like.” Remus trailed off as Tallie stopped at a large room with a massive solid-oak table.

Hermione tucked that knowledge away for later.

“And Lucius is… volunteering?” She raised a brow. “That doesn’t strike you as the least bit suspicious?”

As if he were a demon that could be summoned by name, a _pop_ preceded Lucius Malfoy’s apparition. The blonde adjusted his dark red robes before peering over at the group. Hermione watched Arthur’s spine straighten, his hand twitching briefly to his wand before settling.

“Lucius.” Remus’s light eyes flicked to the wizard in acknowledgement, though they betrayed little else about his thoughts.

“Tallie,” Lucius addressed the elf first. “Tea, I think.”

Tallie’s bulbous eyes flit between the Order members and Lucius like she was trying to determine whether the request was a trick. She soon gave up and disapparated loudly.

Hermione cursed Lucius mentally for the short intermission in which he’d apparently hired a full team of stylists. His robes were a dark, wine-like red, shocking and clearly tailored for business. Unbound and a far cry from its earlier distress, his hair swung smoothly around his neck.

“Remus... Arthur.” Lucius's drawl matched the stiffness of his posture and she marveled at the mask he’d been able to conjure since their interaction on the balcony. Hermione made a stark contrast. The backs of her knees were beginning to ache, reminders of their rough treatment against the metal, and she was sure her hair was a sight.

She refocused.

Tonks crossed over from where she’d been inspecting a suit of armor and raised a thin, candy pink eyebrow at Lucius, effectively breaking the moment.

“Uncle.”

Hermione fought the instinct to raise her brows. Of course.

“Nymphadora.”

When she spoke again, Tonk’s retort lacked real thorns. “Condolences, you slimy git.”

If Lucius’s mask hiccuped at the reminder of Narcissa’s death, Hermione was certain that she was the only one who noticed it. His silver eyes slid to hers for an instant before Arthur cleared his throat with a loud cough.

“Shall we get on with it?” Arthur looked decidedly out of place in Malfoy Manor, but where its Slytherin lord might once have lobbed an insult ripe for the occasion, Lucius only gave a small nod before gesturing to the massive wooden table.

Tonks winked at Hermione and gestured to the seat next to her own. For the first time, Hermione was struck by the hints of Bellatrix in her face. She’d never studied the metamorphmagus closely before, but it was now impossible to miss the full lips and discerning eyes that Hermione had observed as Black family traits.

Of course, Tonks had more than just pureblood features. Hermione recalled what the Snatchers bragged weeks ago in the woods— how they’d killed a muggleborn, Ted Tonks— and she looked around the table with fresh perspective. She wasn't as alone in her grief as she felt.

They’d all lost someone. Or several someones.

Tallie reappeared with a _pop_ , followed by Doddy who carried the bulk of their tea set up.

“First and foremost,” Remus began after the elves left once more, “this is a preliminary discussion, and not an official Order meeting.” 

Lucius rolled his eyes but said nothing.

“Arthur is here—”

“—against my will, mind you,” the redhead cut in, sounding very much like Ron.

“—to elucidate us to the Ministry’s day to day.” Remus finished with a sigh, reminding Hermione very much of the world-weary professor he’d once been.

“It’s changing, the Ministry,” Tonks added aside to Hermione, “changed even in the last couple of weeks since I’ve been out on leave.” The witch made eyes towards her massive torso. “However, operations remain consistent.”

“Consistent?”

“That is to say, Voldemort's plan for a quiet Ministry takeover has worked— unless you’re looking for corruption that you know exists, you’d be hard pressed to find any.” Arthur cut in.

“And are we?” Hermione asked, aware that the Order had been watching corruption take root in the Ministry for years without fighting it in the open, unwilling to risk paranoia from the majority and dissent from old purebloods. "A statue of crushed muggles that reads 'Magic is Might' seemed obvious to me."

Lucius tilted his head towards her from where he sat to her right, alone an the end of the table. She noted that he’d placed the majority of himself out of Arthur’s sightline with Remus in between them.

“We are! And much more than last fall, especially now that we know who to watch—” Arthur spoke through a tense jaw, reluctant to acknowledge help from the Death Eater in any way, “—though there is no accountability process.”

“The ministry is rotten, or near rotten, from head to toe.” said Tonks. “Even in the Auror department, hell, _especially_ in the Auror department… unless they were trained by Mad-Eye like me, I give ‘em a once-over.”

“Well, what’s being done?” Hermione asked.

“Right now—nothing.” Remus stated. “There is no Internal Investigations, Dolores Umbridge has been raining hell under the guise of the Muggleborn Registration Act, and for all Kingsley likes to pretend he knows what goes on behind closed doors, Thicknesse’s operations remain largely unknown.”

“Unknown is a generous word for it,” Arthur emphasized, leaning forward on his elbows. “He’s being propped up by Death Eaters— strong ones who know how to cover their tracks, but we don’t know who… anymore.”

Hermione didn’t miss the glance that Arthur shot at Lucius. 

“Anymore?”

“Corban Yaxley placed Pius Thicknesse under the Imperius curse long before Rufus Scrimgeour was murdered.” Lucius filled in the information Arthur had omitted. “The curse broke quite violently the night Voldemort died, when Yaxley was impaled on a spike beneath the manor’s floorboards in a trap courtesy of my late father.”

Next to her, Tonks shuddered.

“Thicknesse's stay at St. Mungo’s…” Hermione pieced together the headlines she’d seen with the new information.

“Indeed.” Lucius inclined his chin towards her and Hermione found herself overly warm in such near-proximity to him once more.

“When a curse that dark lives in someone for that long,” Remus confirmed, “it’s sudden removal can damage soft tissue, brain function, even memory. Thicknesse collapsed and was placed into a medical coma.”

“Are we certain he’s even alive?” Tonks asked her husband.

“That’s where it gets tricky.” Remus ran a hand through his hair. “No one on our side has laid eyes on him, but _The Prophet_ reports he’s in good health.”

“ _The Prophet’s_ been full of shite for months,” Arthur grumbled, sounding resigned. “Can’t expect any good there.”

Hermione looked around the table in disbelief. As grateful as she was for the information, the lack of progress astounded her. Hell, at least _they’d_ managed to destroy a horcrux after breaking into the Ministry to steal it.

“So… while Harry, Ron, and I were on the run, the Order was what? Taking notes? Making a ‘Most Wanted’ list?” Hermione let the bitter note ring through her voice for the first time.

She felt a steel gaze boring into her temple, but refused to look at Lucius.

“No, it’s good, really.”

“Hermione—” Remus began. She wasn’t finished.

“I’m glad you were able to have one last holiday season while our lot went slowly insane in the Forest of Dean. Do you know that Dolores Umbridge had Mad-Eye’s severed eye attached to her door?”

It was a low blow, but she refused to soften her words. Arthur flinched, his face reddening, and Tonks leaned back in her seat, seemingly content with letting Hermione have a go.

“You’re sitting here telling me,” her voice dropped as she carried on, thick with insinuation, “that since the wedding, the Order has sat back while the Ministry persecuted hundreds of muggleborns, watched corruption leach into top Ministry spots, and done what? Nothing?”

“I told them you’d be furious.” Tonks murmured.

“Furious is one word for it.” Hermione felt her magical energy gathering like adrenaline. “What was the point, if all that happened in the last year was more decay?”

“You couldn’t possibly know!” The steady pressure that had been building behind Arthur’s skull burst. “The ministry is a sprung trap! You don’t know what it’s like to go through a thousand checkpoints every day at work— worrying about your family if you answer one question wrong.”

His self-victimization reminded her of Ron's worst days so completely in that moment that Hermione let out a dry laugh.

“Arthur’s right, Hermione—“ Remus tried to agree, but she interrupted him again. 

“Right for telling _me_ that I didn’t have to worry about my family? About my parents? That’s pretty fucking rich.”

She let the words hang in heavy silence. Tonks squeezed her knee gently under the table while the reminder that her parents were somewhere, safe despite their obliviation at her own hand, threatened to crush Hermione’s remaining composure.

“We’ve all lost people,” Tonks reiterated, grounding the group. “But we have to keep moving forward. Together.”

Remus nodded, eyes dropping to his unborn child before clearing his throat. As she had in every Hogwarts classroom she’d been in, Hermione continued questioning.

“Have they reopened the Wizengamot courtrooms?” She recalled Kingsley’s _Daily Prophet_ op ed from the morning she woke in Malfoy manor.

Remus shook his head, but Lucius replied first.

“Until a day when Thicknesse’s political position is stronger,” he looked her dead in the eye, “or nonexistent, the courtrooms will remain closed.”

“Why?”

“The muggleborn registry was a ruse all along.” Lucius supplied. “The Dark Lord’s— _Voldemort’s_ — intention was always sinister. The Wizengamot was never meant to entertain these cases. Never once did he intend to discover where their magic had come from. Anyone who believes that is a fool.”

“Da’ certainly knew it when he ran.” Tonks eyes flashed, the pain of her father’s death evident.

“So even though the trials would be bogus, without the courtrooms open, they’re all just…”

“Sitting in Azkaban, yes.” Remus finished grimly. “One of myriad pieces in this puzzle.”

“Without bloody house dues, the courts would still be better off.” Arthur said. “You-Know-Who had plenty of time to influence the jurors. As it stands now, the courts are so stacked that any and all proceedings are unfair.”

“House dues?” She remembered them mentioned in the _Prophet_ as well.

“Annual fees paid by families who hold ancestral seats in the Wizengamot,” Lucius answered her again, avoiding Arthur’s glare. “Houses who cannot pay their dues are unable to sit in court. They are encouraged by wizarding tradition to pledge their seats to another noble house by proxy or forfeit them altogether.”

“A load of classist old bollix, truly.” Tonks supplied.

Hermione’s eyes widened, reevaluating her childhood with a new understanding of the impoverished vitriol with which Arthur Weasley had berated Lucius Malfoy in front of his children before Voldemort’s return.

“How many seats do you stand to control if the dues are abolished?” Hermione asked Arthur.

“Twelve.”

“Twelve?”

“Five for House Weasley. Seven for House Prewett by proxy—” he stiffened, “—two of those represent Fabian’s and Gideon’s Orders of Merlin First Class.”

She remembered a snapshot of the original Order of the Phoenix that Harry had pointed out in Grimmauld place and flinched at the brutal reminder of Molly’s brothers’ deaths.

“You’re saying that anyone with an Order of Merlin can sit the Wizengamot?”

“Can, and often does, so long as the award is First Class,” Remus replied in turn. “There was a hot bit of controversy years back when Fudge awarded himself one—”

“Never could be left out, the coot,” Tonks interrupted.

“— and Dumbledore’s Order of Merlin, First Class allowed him to sit the court after he defeated Grindelwald in the forties.”

“By that logic, you’d think Grindelwald himself should earn one for killing Voldemort,” Hermione mused, earning an indelicate exhale from Lucius and an outright snort from Tonks.

“And you?” Hermione fixed the seneschal to her right with a look.

“I, Miss Granger?”

She rolled her eyes. “How many Wizengamot seats does House Malfoy possess?”

“Near thirty, at last count—”

“Too bloody many,” Arthur blurted.

“— though I expect Crabbe, Parkinson and Goyle to formally rescind their vassal obligations as soon as they’re able.”

“I thought the Parkinsons were rich,” said Hermione, thinking of the perfectly manicured hands of Pansy Parkinson as they passed her a beaker under Snape’s watchful eye.

“They are, or at least, are certainly rich enough to afford their house dues.” Tonks confirmed. “I was on a raid there a couple years back with Alastor when we were still trying to pinpoint the base of Voldemort’s operation.”

For the first time in their conversation, Lucius had the good sense to look guilty.

“In this case, it becomes a question of loyalties,” Lucius elaborated his point. “I presume that no Death Eater alive will throw their lot back in with me. A second fall from grace does little to endear those allegiances which traditionally require stability.”

Hermione wondered if there was something the wizard was omitting but filed it away for later, marveling at the ease with which she was becoming attuned to Lucius’s politically-minded parlance.

“Good riddance,” Arthur pointed a stout finger into the table. “The courts will be better off with less Death Eaters.”

“Excuse me?” Lucius’s tone was tightly controlled.

“Death Eaters.” Arthur scoffed, doubling down. “Surely you don’t deny it now, Lucius.”

To describe the look that Arthur received from the blonde wizard as withering would be to vastly understate its’ potency.

“Arthur—” Remus warned, only to be interrupted by the wizard to his left.

“Do expand your reality before you assume that fewer Death Eaters pledged to House Malfoy in the judiciary means fewer Death Eaters in the Wizengamot itself…” Lucius’s tone dripped with disdain. “You risk your _credibility_ as a critical thinker.”

Hermione didn’t imagine that Lucius ever once considered Arthur a critical thinker, but she held her tongue.

“The snake has a point,” Tonks cut in. “If anything, it means their votes are for sale to the highest bidder that isn’t Lucius.”

Hermione suspected that Remus had silenced Arthur under the table, judging from his beet-like countenance.

“ _If_ the Order decides to have a hand in the courts,” Remus carried on, “and mind you, that’s a big ‘if’, there will be inevitabilities that we cannot control.”

“Rubbish.” Lucius deadpanned.

Remus’s eyes widened. “Say again?”

“The abolition of house dues is one item, but to reopen the courts without a plan for succession is foolish chaos, even for the Order of the Phoenix.”

Though she'd just defended him, Tonks now glared at Lucius with enough heat that Hermione felt it singe her shoulder.

“You’re not in any position to lecture on what is and isn’t foolish, _uncle_.” Her teacup rattled with unfettered magic. “Care to direct us to whichever wing of this bloody manse you let Voldemort curl up in? The Order’s judgement beats yours, ten times out of ten.”

Remus shot a proud look at his wife, but it was short-lived.

“A most foul sin indeed,” Lucius seethed, self-control slipping away in increments, “to share decades worth of knowledge on an archaic body of government with which I have experience.”

He blazed on, silver eyes flashing.

“Should the seats of House Black fall, like Grimmauld Place, to Harry Potter? Or do they honor Narcissa, joining those of House Malfoy in Draco’s name? Perhaps Andromeda, though magically disowned— or you yourself, half ancient and noble in blood! Do you wish to claim them for the babe you carry?”

This last question Lucius directed at Tonks, eyebrows raised. Remus bristled across the table from Hermione and Arthur, able to speak once more, interjected with a pointed barb.

“I can think of nothing more _foolish_ than allowing this Death Eater—” he leveled a finger at Lucius, “— to roam free with a wand.”

Hermione cut in for the first time in several minutes. “If we’re taking magic away from people, we’re no better than Voldemort.” 

“And what about the muggleborns in Azkaban, Hermione? Do you think they’d be happy to see Lucius Malfoy carrying around a wand?”

Arthur’s retorts were quick for a Weasley— after years of Ron’s awkwardness, Hermione could admit to that.

“They’d certainly feel better about it if the person pledged to protect Harry Potter from harm had a wand to his name.” Hermione replied coolly, surprising herself.

She saw Lucius’s head tilt toward her in her peripheral vision, but kept her gaze steady on Arthur.

“In this instance,” Remus continued after a pregnant pause, “I agree with Hermione. Lucius has proved himself helpful enough—” 

“Helpful enough to who?” Arthur interrupted again. “We don’t know what he wants, he’s done nothing!”

Hermione drew breath to speak again, but someone else beat her to it.

“I hate the git as much as the rest of you, but even I can admit that entering an Unbreakable Vow is a far cry from nothing.” The uncharacteristically rational voice drifted in over Hermione’s shoulder as all eyes whipped to where Harry had arrived, framed in the doorway.

His hair was in true form, tousled to obscenity, though his skin lacked the sickly pallor she’d come accustomed to finding on his face.

“Alright then, Harry?” Tonks grinned wildly.

The Boy Who Lived nodded at them as convincingly as he could manage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *screams in 3.8K words of dialogue formatting* Hope you enjoyed!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Longest chap but no way to split it. What's this? A fundamental plot arc after all this time?

During her second week at Malfoy Manor Hermione became fond of the monochromatic light filtering through her bedroom.

Harry snored beside her, chuffing out small _ron-pshi_ sounds with every exhale.

She rolled over and smiled at the riot of black hair peeking out from beneath her covers. Harry had his own room but came to hers most nights, needing the proximity. The sleepovers were platonic, but intimate nonetheless.

One didn’t spend seven months in a tent with someone and forget the comforting sound of their breath in the darkness.

Hermione had been surprised to learn that the elves had prepared her a room of her own. If anyone had told her previously that she’d one day be manse-mates with Lucius Malfoy and Harry Potter, she’d have searched them for the confundus charm before they finished the sentence.

Stranger things had happened lately.

_“Contrary to my life’s trajectory,” Lucius sneered the words at Remus and Arthur as he rose from the table. “I have no further desire to discuss who should be denied access to magic. If your doubts prevail, I dearly relish my prompt and overwhelming arrest.”_

_Tonks rolled her eyes and groaned as Lucius strode out the door but her gesture fell short of his dark crimson robes._

Hermione had stayed long enough to watch Arthur Weasley pull Harry into his arms. After the conversation they’d just had, she could have used that hug herself. She had considered staying to fume while Remus, Tonks, and Arthur filled Harry in on what he’d missed—precious little, as it turned out— but decided against it.

No sooner than Hermione had sat down to destress she had heard a _tap-tap_ on the wooden door.

Tallie had been sent to escort her to a bedroom. The medical beds were for the sick and wounded, the elf assured her, and the manor was ripe with empty suites.

The pair had walked down the now-familiar hall, passing Lucius’s study. Hermione strained her ears to pick up the sounds of a clinking brandy snifter or the scrabbling of a quill, but couldn’t make any out. They descended two flights of stairs before Tallie led her to a doorway on the second-floor corridor.

Her rooms were generous, to say the least.

Reassured by a patient Tallie that these particular suites were used to host foreign dignitaries in the seventeenth century and not blood supremacists in the twentieth, Hermione had set about exploring the space.

She could have been inside a massive seashell.

There were wall sconces of curving ivory and a blue pastel settee that Hermione suspected was covered in its original silk. The sloping lines of a massive mirror in the corner mimicked the sinuous curving headboard. The mattress boasted light gold bedding and matching curtains hung from ceiling to floor.

Hermione had felt like she walked into the room of a French princess, the experience of luxury quite foreign after a year of perpetual danger.

She had collapsed into a dusty pink armchair and it was in the chair, half-asleep, that Harry found her after the meeting. The pair had spent the night catching up as best they needed to. Hermione discovered that Harry hadn’t told anyone about their horcrux hunt.

_“ Something stopped me,” Harry ruffled his hands through his hair like he always did. “Maybe it’s my inner Slytherin coming out after so many days in this place.”_

He’d been joking, but Hermione couldn’t help but see the truth in his words. Whether it was the war itself, the stagnancy of the Order, the manor, or her proximity to Lucius’s political acumen, Hermione found herself reevaluating her efforts.

Everything was messy and uncertain and she hated it. Some mornings Hermione missed the straightforward nature of their horcrux hunt, but when she had broached the subject to Harry he’d flinched like a cartoon.

 _“Voldemort is gone, Hermione. We have time to do it right now_.”

Despite his assurances, Harry was reluctant to start investigating again. She understood this in theory— they’d been recently traumatized and Hermione herself was deliberately avoiding evaluating her mental state— yet she couldn’t bring herself to idle. She’d read the occlumency text Lucius had given her twice and was halfway through a third go. It was full of infuriating paragraphs. What vital nuggets of wisdom existed were often buried between useless sentences and flowery prose.

Hermione rolled over, picking up _A Guide to Advanced Occlumency_ where it lay on her bedside table.

Many of the techniques from the book mirrored muggle writings that she was familiar with from a young foray into meditation. Conceiving of her headspace in three-dimensions reminded her of the way Wilkie Twycross had shouted, _“Destination! Determination! Deliberation!”_ in her sixth year.

Hermione wondered if Lucius had ever made such comparisons. It was his blasted book after all.

According to Harry, the only real thing Snape had imparted on him in their private lessons involved ‘closing your mind’, a line Harry delivered with a bitter grimace. He had outright refused to breach the mental sanctuary she was building, explaining that he’d never been taught legilimency.

No matter. Lucius Malfoy had already proven himself highly capable of burrowing into her head with ease.

Hermione slipped her fingers between pages with folded corners.

_“When considering the defense of the mind, one must also commit to the precise opposite. The internal shore of your resilience is the only element you can control— throw your strength against the battering ram. Mental landscaping alone falls short for the budding Occlumens.”_

Hermione snorted.

The whole thing was insufferable, as if the author had buried a few key concepts within enough fluff to fill pages. She fancied throwing it at Lucius when she next saw him.

Lucius and Draco had proved elusive, scarcely occupying the manor’s common areas. She felt the wards tug often and had become accustomed to the heartstone’s more nauseating twinges. Draco was a rarer sight than Lucius, save for one morning when Hermione would swear she saw a broom with a blonde rider weaving above the distant forest.

“Milsy?” Hermione asked, turning away from Harry’s snoozing form. Hermione had quickly ascertained that Milsy was the elf in charge of all things concerning food.

“Yes, miss?” the elf appeared, dusting her hands on an oversized apron.

“Would you please bring a tea service when you have time?”

“Would misss be liking finger sandwiches too?”

“No, thank you Milsy. Thank you, erm—”

Milsy’s head bobbed stoically and she left with a small _crack_ before the witch could babble on.

Hermione ignored Harry’s raised brow as he rolled over to face the commotion.

“Not a word, Potter.”

Admittedly hypocritical in her elf rights stance— at least the Malfoy elves worked by choice, if not for wages— Hermione had gone all of two days without asking anything of the house elves. On the third day she’d cracked, craving coffee.

When Hermione had asked Tallie about the elves’ working status, the elf’s ears had perked up and she babbled at length about Narcissa Malfoy.

The late witch had freed all of the elves upon Voldemort’s intent to occupy the manor. Many had subsequently gone into hiding around the estate. The elves that remained exposed hadn’t lasted long. Tallie’s eyes misted over when she spoke of the snake Nagini, revealing much of Narcissa's motivation. Repulsive in all ways, the dark wizard’s disregard for house elves had been legendary.

She thought of Kreacher and Regulus and shuddered.

Hermione stood and made her way to the loo.

Porcelain curvature and gilded mirrors dominated the decor. Hermione took in her reflection. Her hair was monstrously long and her curls were heavy, fighting against their own weight. She braided it quickly. The youthful posturing she’d maintained throughout her Hogwarts years no longer reflected back through the glass. She told herself that her cheeks weren’t hollow, but determined. Her eyes weren’t sunken, but calculating.

Not sleeping well hadn’t helped.

A chronic insomniac even before the war, Hermione’s tendencies to binge information into the small hours of the night remained unchanged. They were the reason she’d managed to read that insufferable loaner of Lucius’s almost three times. She sighed and turned away from the glass.

Milsy reappeared, heralded by the clinking of tea cups. There were no finger sandwiches in sight, but Harry was halfway through a savory scone.

“Wha ‘oo thin’ abou’ ha visit to the Burrow?” It made her think of Ron, the way he looked up at her and spoke through his food, scratching the remnants of sleep from his eyes. Her stomach clenched.

“I don’t know, Harry,” She didn’t bother asking him to rephrase, distracted by the light buzz of panic that started to move up and down her arms. “Have Molly and Arthur replied yet?”

“Well no,” Harry gulped. “But we’ve always been welcome, Hermione, you know that.”

“I don’t know.” She trailed off, remembering Arthur’s infantilizing gaze from the meeting.

“Hermione?”

Hermione had gone still. Harry called it her “empty”, describing the moment when she forgot her body, overwhelmed by her thoughts. She’d experienced it under duress since her stint as a paralysed second-year in the Hogwarts hospital wing, but endured episodes more often now that the daily paranoia of fighting a war had faded. Some days it was as if Hermione had nothing to show for the war aside from the swirling mass of thoughts it had left behind.

“ _You’re_ always welcome, Harry.” Her reply ensured he couldn’t miss her distinction.

“Hermione—”

“You weren’t there, Harry. Arthur—”

“—Arthur loves you, and so does Molly—”

“—it was bad, alright?”

Hermione took an irritated breath, pausing in case Harry insisted jumped in again. She continued.

“I was livid— raging about everything the Order hasn’t done and Arthur, he took it personally.” Hermione noted the shrill tone that came out in her voice when she was stressed.

“We owe each other apologies, Harry, not unannounced visits.”

He finally seemed to consider her words and Hermione rolled her eyes, grabbing at what she considered to be a rather unusually-shaped crumpet. Harry’s voice was soft when he spoke.

“You’ll have to see each other at meetings.”

Hermione released a breathy laugh. _This_ she could manage.

“I know, and Harry— I look forward to it.” Her small smile forced her cheeks up. “It’s what I want. These feelings won’t be forever, but rushing to the Burrow before I’ve had a chance to cool off will only make me feel strange. Like I’m forcing it.”

“I do feel rotten not seeing Ron’s grave yet.” Harry’s confession wasn’t meant to hurt her but it did.

She evaluated him. In her mind, a visit to Ron’s grave and the Burrow had been something they would do together, of course they would— but after watching Harry drift in and out of depression she reconsidered.

Harry’s perpetually slumped shoulders and inability to fall asleep by himself screamed at her that he needed a different kind of reintegration than she did.

“I won’t be mad,” Hermione begun, “or sad or disappointed or—”

“Hermione...”

“Well if you wouldn’t interrupt me!”

They made fleeting eye contact before breaking into small giggles.

“What I’m trying to say is that if you go to Ron’s without me and I won’t resent you for it.” She managed the sentence and reached for his wrist. “I just need you to know that I’m not ready yet. My head is too full.”

Harry furrowed his brows but said nothing, very aware of her tendency to elaborate.

“Remember in second year? When Dobby blocked Platform Nine and Three-Quarters and you and Ron smashed into the barrier?”

Harry did an admirable job of preventing his eyes from misting over.

“I feel like that’s been my brain, Harry. Just full-steam, all this life and death and magic and _torture_ — and finally it’s stopped. Out of nowhere. I mean it hasn’t really stopped, but you get it.”

He nodded in sympathy.

“The thing is, I used to have somewhere to put all of these thoughts. Now what?” Hermione threw a hand in the air and laughed drily.

“I’m alone enough that I can finally think, even if it’s damned chaotic, and Harry, I know, _I know_ — it’s Malfoy Manor but my brain doesn’t care about that as much anymore. Voldemort doesn’t live here like he used to and Lucius Malfoy is a widowed drinker and Draco killed his fucking aunt at—”

Harry cleared his throat and Hermione paused.

“Sorry.”

“S’okay. I get it.”

“You do?”

Harry huffed out the breath he’d been holding. “Yeah, I mean at least a bit. I can’t sleep because I’m lonely, not because I’m worried about the bloody Malfoys like I used to be.”

“Oh, _Harry_ …”

“S’okay, isn’t it?” He repeated, placing his other hand on top of hers where she still squeezed his wrist.

“I’ve been lonely all my life, Hermione, in some way or another. And now, with Ron gone… I feel it all the time.” Harry shook his head with disbelief. “The worst part is that I used to be connected to Voldemort’s emotions— but even that’s gone and it’s almost like there’s this void in my head. So I get it… I need people right now, and you just—don’t.”

“Eventually I will,” she replied with a solemn nod.

He smiled at her in that humble Harry way of his. She tucked her head into the curve of his neck and they sat on the edge of her bed while their tea ran cold.

“You really think Lucius Malfoy is a drinker?” Harry prompted Hermione to retell the story of the night she’d found the manor’s lord well into his cups before he left her room in favor of his own en-suite.

Later that afternoon Harry apparated to the Burrow and Hermione lay in bed transfiguring the lamps on her bureau into house plants and back. The repeated transfigurations ensured that the lines between lamp and plant began to blur. She now had a lamp that dripped gilded petals from its shade and a small, flowering cactus with glowing blossoms.

Eventually she grew bored, tossed her wand against the bedspread, and glared up at the ornate ceiling.

Hermione imagined the Burrow, visualising what it might look like as Harry apparated into warm yellow light. Molly would rush into his embrace, the plates she’d been levitating would crash to the floor. Ginny was at school but Fred and George would be in the sitting room, eager to face the cold. They’d wrap handknit scarves around their faces if it meant that Harry needn’t bear the weight of Ron’s death alone.

She tried to imagine what her own parents’ expressions might be if they had to look over her grave, a morbid daydream was no longer possible in reality. She’d ensured that. These days Hermione remembered them best when she was looking in the mirror at herself, her features unmistakable echoes of their own.

Hermione watched sunset colors turn to evening blues out the window and drummed her fingers on her sternum.

Boredom reigned supreme.

Hermione felt a new understanding towards destructive behaviors. She wanted to blow up a cauldron, or maybe a classroom of them— she wanted to learn how to roll her own cigarettes and maybe smoke them too, just for something to do.

The occlumency book was still nearby, mocking her. Despite the return of her beaded bag, it was the only book in the room.

Hermione was missing possessions.

The realization had occurred as she’d consolidated the contents of her beaded bag with the satchel that Remus and Tonks had packed for her. Her bag was light. Hermione had turned the thing inside out, taking inventory of what had survived the run. Several of her books were gone, along with Harry’s invisibility cloak.

She hadn’t told Harry.

Hermione wasn’t certain exactly _when_ they went missing. When she tried to remember the details of the hour preceding her torture and Voldemort’s death, she struggled. The Snatchers could have taken her things, but she was inclined to believe that Lucius had hidden them away along with the sword of Gryffindor.

The Order had arrived at the manor after battle but only Draco knew what Lucius had or hadn’t done in the interim. Harry had been unconscious like her, Narcissa dead, Ron dead or dying.

Luckily, _Tales of Beedle the Bard_ remained in her bag, Xenophilius Lovegood’s Hallows safe while Voldemort was dead. That her other books had been a part of the elusive loot was an insult of the highest tier.

That Hermione had thus far been denied access to the Malfoy library was another. _To bar her from the library? The one she'd grown up jealous of anytime Draco bragged about his father’s ancient books and gold leaf scrolls?_

Two days ago she'd implored Milsy to ask Lucius about the library. After all, Hermione didn’t know the state of it— covered in long-shed Nagini skin? Rotting with the fear stench of Bellatrix’s victims? The elf had refused. The following day, Doddy acted uncharacteristically hard-of-hearing when she had demanded he at least show her where the bloody room was.

Tallie hadn’t responded at all, tipped off by the others to the witch’s intentions.

Hermione had had enough. Stepping outside and into the role of Hermione Granger still seemed too much, but the existence she’d led of late had left her numb. No longer. Tonight she would lean into her Gryffindor spirit.

The world had gone to complicated shite, it was true, but to stonewall her completely after filching her things? Indignant, she told herself that the least surprising element of her situation _would_ be the audacity of Lucius Malfoy.

If Hermione wanted peace of mind, she saw only one good option— to disrupt his evening.

She cast the patronus charm, embodying the dramatic sneer of her host.

“I will open every door in this thrice-damned manor. My brain will leak out my ears and onto your floorboards if I’m doomed to read this book a fourth time. I hope that I find every deadly, Voldemort-y object between here and your pureblood bookshelves.”

After her otter dove away to find Lucius, Hermione dashed into the second floor corridor. She was nothing if not true to her word.

The adjacent suite of rooms to her own were similar in their swirling rococo theme. Large sheets were draped over the furnishings and dust motes begged for any disturbance that might set them free.

She used a blasting curse on unrelenting doorknobs and rattled metal knockers that refused to budge.

In what looked like an abandoned study on the level above her own, Hermione found Floo powder above the hearth. She cast a quick _incendio_ and lowered herself to her knees in front of the crackling flames before taking up a pinch.

“Malfoy Library!” Hermione shouted.

The flames remained lackluster. Hermione would swear that the connections to the library had been cut from the source. She sat back on her heels, frustrated, and weighed the merits of apparating directly into Lucius Malfoy’s study.

She could manage it.

A memory of the window seat she’d found him in as he drank himself sideways after Narcissa’s interment lived rent-free in her mind. She could apparate onto it’s middle cushion, no problem. Lucius had yet to appear or otherwise return her patronus message, even though the racket she was making was louder than anything in the manor since her torture.

With no signs of the fabled library, Hermione growled and moved on.

One room was filled with statues and paintings. Another had several heavy-looking billiards tables and built-in ashtrays that lined the wall like sconces. The most nondescript door she kicked in revealed a small kitchenette that positively screamed service kitchen at her with its house elf-sized cutlery.

Still no stubborn blonde. Still no library.

Hermione huffed her way onto the fourth floor landing. If she continued higher, she’d be in the tower. At the far end of the corridor, a dim glow from beneath Lucius’s study bled onto the dark wood floorboards.

She’d always hated being ignored.

Hermione cast a second patronus and sent it along with a simple threat, knowing he would understand her reference to his Unbreakable Vow. Her otter darted away but didn’t move through Lucius’s door, sinking instead through a plain stone wall at the end of the passage.

Curious.

She walked closer, pausing to eavesdrop just in case. She heard nothing, but hadn’t expected to. Lucius Malfoy was a fine enough wizard to employ magic’s finest sound-dampening charms if he wished.

She touched the wall that her otter had disappeared through, running her hands along the stone grooves. It was solid, if suspicious. _No cavernous secret passageways, then._

Hermione pressed her ear against the cool surface in a way that reminded her of pressing her head against the portrait hole after quidditch matches, curious if cheers or silence would await her.

Nothing.

For it’s part, the stone wall looked, sounded, and acted like a stone wall. She cast a _revelio_ that came back negative, though that didn’t mean much. The Room of Requirement had also been undetectable in such a way.

The light leaking from Lucius’s study hadn’t changed. Maybe he’d left a lamp on? Hermione considered that Lucius really _was_ gone, off doing whatever it was that he did with all that money. Perhaps her patronus was taking the most direct route to its recipient, the wall merely an innocent feature.

As soon as Hermione had convinced herself to cast a third patronus for a test, she heard an unmistakable _crack_ and a few heavy footfalls from inside the study.

Intent on at least blowing his door off, Hermione pushed off of the stone wall with both hands. She squared up with the door, palm tightening around vinewood when a second, closer apparition startled her, prompting a reaction Hermione hadn’t memorized so much as committed to body.

“ _Stupefy!_ ” she shouted.

The stunner ricocheted off of Lucius’s shield charm and he raised a cool eyebrow at her, stepping closer.

Hermione’s pulse fought to settle. Lucius Malfoy still managed to be a tremendously imposing wizard when he was armed and alone in a corridor. It became difficult to imagine him powerless, shivering in Azkaban when he existed here a manor indelibly steeped in his considerable magic.

Lucius pocketed his wand— Hermione wondered where his infamous cane went— and extended a long arm, rapping the wood beside her head with strong knuckles.

“Despite your grand illusions of rattling every door in the manor, some things do remain sacred to me.” He nodded sharply at the wand in her hand.

Hermione shored up her inner patience and considered how she might feel if someone were to blast open her study the way that she very much wanted to blast open his. After a moment she stowed her wand and stepped aside, settling for an insult.

“You’re bloody dramatic this evening.”

Lucius resought his wand with a sidelong frown. “The irony cannot be lost on you.”

“You apparated two feet from me,” she retorted. “Who does that?” 

“I can’t manage a patronus.”

“What?”

Lucius ignored her, ire at being asked to repeat himself evident. He looked exhausted, she realised, noting the way that his pupils flit from her face to the hallway to the study and back in a moment.

“Aren’t you sleeping?” Hermione asked, hoping to catch him off guard.

He removed his wards with glacial wand movements, letting the sounds of a magical lock sliding apart fill the silence. Lucius held the heavy door back for her to pass.

The space was much the same as Hermione remembered it, though many abandoned teacups and documents lingered on previously bare surfaces. She found the mess both surprising— the clutter meant surely that the house elves had been denied access— yet somehow in character for the man. Lucius had possessed the foresight to bind himself to the Chosen One through blood and oath at the first opportunity; that his study and mind bore similarly chaotic fruit came as little shock.

Without him in it, the chair behind the desk looked stern and empty. Hermione suspected that he’d had it charmed long ago, uncomfortable as it looked. Beautifully bound books lined the perimeter, including a shelf of antique-looking journals that dominated the wall to her right. Hermione’s anger rekindled at the sight.

Lucius threw himself down into his chair cloak and all, unbuttoning his waistcoat.

“To what do I owe the pleasure, Miss Granger?”

“No pleasure at all.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “A pity.”

Hermione looked longingly at the window seat but chose a chair instead. 

“To start, you barred me from your library and plied me with what might very well be the most irritatingly-written guidebook that I’ve had the misfortune of reading.”

He denied it categorically. “I don’t follow, though I understand your disdain for Barnett’s work.”

Hermione narrowed her eyes. He tread the line between keeping his secrets and toying with her outright. How stupid did he think she was?

“You see, Malfoy,” she switched tracks, “I’ve been trying to puzzle you out.”

“Oh?”

“Of course. Brightest grey matter in the British Isles, and whatnot.” Hermione touched a flippant finger to her temple then flicked it away.

Lucius chuckled.

“The public does tend to exaggerate.”

“ _Please_ , piss off.”

“Gladly. It was you who summoned me, witch.” Lucius sat up straighter and she forced herself not to retreat in response. They breathed.

Hermione thought she heard a small chuffing noise behind her and turned, half-expecting to find Tallie collecting the empty teacups and replacing them with a fresh pot.

There was nothing.

“Pray tell,” he spurred over her shoulder, “what _have_ you come up with?”

She faced him again, argument primed and ready.

“It’s strange. I can’t think of a single good reason for the library of a renowned dark wizard to lack _Spellman’s Syllabary_ and _Secrets of the Darkest Art_ — but here we are.”

Hermione drew a deliberate breath. Lucius remained stoic.

“For argument's sake, the alternative is much less likely.” Hermione outlined, fidgeting with the end of her braid. “Those Snatchers had one brain stem to split between them. They couldn’t identify me or— or Ron, for that matter. Never mind that we’ve been all over the papers for years.”

“Are you asking me if I took your books, Hermione?”

He’d done a good deal to maintain his neutral mask while she said her piece.

“I’m asking _why_ you took them, Malfoy. Don’t bloody deny it.”

He considered her from between the twin curtains of pale blonde hair that framed his face before rising to open an ornate display cabinet. He took something she couldn’t see off of a high shelf and resumed sitting.

“If you’re expecting an apology, I am not your man.”

“We agree then. You’re the thief.”

“I owed Narcissa a litany of apologies that died alongside her.”

“Charming,” she cursed. “I’d like a bloody explanation, not a lecture.”

Lucius’s nostrils flared slightly, but she grinned wide— until he placed the object he’d taken from the cabinet between them and her heart skipped.

The locket.

Salazar Slytherin’s heirloom winked up at her in the lowlight, as broken and mangled as it had been since the night Ron had crushed it against the forest floor.

Judging by Lucius’s smug expression, playing dumb was out of the question.

Suddenly vulnerable, she exploded, standing so quickly that her chair shot back several feet. The air quivered. Hermione’s wand was up and out before Lucius had time to inhale.

“Where the fuck—” she hissed, “— did you get that?”

“Mister Potter’s things, of course.” He ignored the tip of her wand and reached beneath his desk for a bottle, pouring a finger of clear liquid into a glass that he conjured with a nonverbal spell.

Hermione flicked her eyes down to the locket before stepping around his desk to shove her wand against his throat. He paused, glass pressed to his lips, and then sat the crystal down slowly before crossing his arms in a picture of ease.

“You have me at a disadvantage, dear.”

“I’ll say.” Her grip was firm and she ignored his familiar epithet.

“While I know the manor is a cold and unforgiving place to live, truly, the conditions cannot be this bad.”

She groaned. “I’m beginning to see why Arthur despises you.”

“Only beginning? D for Dreadful, Miss Granger,” he goaded.

Hermione spun, taking her wand with her as she went. Lucius Malfoy was an infuriating man, one not easily threatened. She shouldn’t have been surprised. A trip to Azkaban and Voldemort’s occupation had thickened his skin and darkened his humour. She released her hair from its plait and ran her fingers along her hairline in frustration, scalp protesting as thousands of follicles changed position at once.

Hermione heard the wizard behind her take several quick drinks before setting his glass back down but she'd become distracted by a bookshelf in the corner by the door. It shimmered when she looked hard enough, shrouded with some subtle enchantment.

She moved closer to study it, but was interrupted by Lucius’s voice.

“How about we come clean?” he offered.

Hermione faced him, skeptical. “You’re the one with dirty hands, Malfoy.”

Nonetheless, she was tempted. That she still lived and breathed was a testament to his quick-thinking before the battle. As it was, Hermione had too many uncertainties to account for and Lucius was occasionally forthcoming. Having the locket already out in the open presented quite an enigmatic solution to her horcrux problems. She didn’t need to skirt around the issue, didn’t need to worry about letting the wrong people in on the hunt who didn’t have experience dealing with such dark magic.

Ron had proven that they weren’t for the faint of heart, no matter how dedicated one was to the cause.

As it stood, Harry was the only person she had to confide in about the horcruxes, except for— apparently— Lucius Malfoy.

Hermione exhaled slowly through her nose and sat down again, extending her hand towards him as if to say _very well_.

“Your books were taken.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to be sure of my suspicions.”

“What suspicions?” She asked.

“My mounting suspicions that the diary I slipped— unknowingly at the time, mind you— into Ginevra Weasley’s cauldron in 1992 was in fact a horcrux. It should not surprise you that such branch of dark magic is considerably less secret in pureblood circles.”

“You knew that Voldemort had horcruxes?” Hermione clarified.

“No. I _discovered_ that he had one. There were rumours among Death Eaters that the three of you were searching for something, but no one would openly speculate as to what around the Dark Lord.”

Hermione found herself pinned by a grey-blue stare.

“Imagine my surprise when I found the remains of another— after all, to make one horcrux is a ghastly self-mutilation, but confirmation of multiple— It’s unheard of even among Death Eaters, but here it was. A piece of his soul under my nose yet again.”

Lucius gestured broadly to the locket, daring her to deny it.

“Ignoring the _very_ implausible premise that you didn’t understand your role in piggybacking a piece of Voldemort’s soul onto _a child_ ,” Hermione countered, “What made you consider the diary in the first place?”

Lucius steepled his fingers and leaned closer above the locket.

“How did you destroy it?” He ignored her query, running long fingers along the thick chain, voice curious.

“Harry stabbed it with a basilisk fang in the Chamber of Secrets.”

“I was referring to the locket, rather.”

“Ah.” Hermione tutted. She could be slippery too. “Did you recognize the locket?”

“Few artifacts of Salazar Slytherin’s remain, and those that do are accounted for in pureblood ledgers. Not this one. Draco’s grandfather Abraxas collected the like, ravenous for connections to power.”

“Don’t you mean your father?”

Lucius waved her off, withdrawing slightly. “Semantics. How did you destroy it?”

“There is a reason Dumbledore gifted the Sword of Gryffindor to Harry in his will.” She waffled, hoping to avoid the part of the tale that included the ministry’s denial, the icy pond, and Harry following a strange patronus to obtain it.

“Of course,” said Lucius, making the leap. “The sword is goblin-made.”

“There was no way Harry would have been able to kill that basilisk second year if the sword hadn’t come for him, and as it turns out—”

“It only takes in that which makes it stronger.” They finished in unison.

Hermione felt a sudden need to drop her gaze from his face back to the locket in question.

“Basilisk venom,” Lucius clarified for himself. “Fascinating.”

Hermione nodded.

“You never explained how you knew the diary was a horcrux,” she deadpanned.

Lucius looked at her, pouring another finger of clear liquid into his glass. He raised an inquisitive brow and she nodded, accepting the tumbler that he conjured for her.

Hermione sniffed at her drink. It was unlike anything she’d ever smelled before, floral and spicy all at once. She raised her own eyebrow in turn.

“Grappa from Italian Switzerland,” Lucius supplied. “Fey-craft.”

It burned when it went down, far stronger than the wine she’d come to enjoy with her parents over the summers.

“So?” she prompted.

Lucius exhaled through his nostrils.

“When the Dark Lord gave me the diary, I was told that it held secrets to opening the Chamber. Plausible enough, for the times. I was to keep it safe, secure— to never lose it. This was 1980. Narcissa was heavily pregnant with Draco, and Voldemort was rising.”

It was fairly easy to imagine.

“I took the diary.” Lucius ran a hand through his hair. “At the time, it seemed stupid not to. Deny the Dark Lord’s request— and one so simple? I had known the manor’s vaults to harbor much worse.”

“Why get rid of it?” she asked.

“Several reasons, not the least of which included divesting myself of the very evidence that Arthur and his ministry lads were eager to pin on me. Blood supremacy and Salazar Slytherin are old bedfellows, after all.”

“Eliminating muggleborns wasn’t a part of your plan?” She herself had been petrified by the basilisk that resided in the Chamber.

“You know my history as well as any other. However, the threat of the ministry discovering a dark object quite literally entrusted to me by the Dark Lord was motivation enough."

“I don’t know if I believe you.” Hermione declared. It was all too convenient.

Lucius was glib. “You don’t have to.”

“I maintained a healthy amount of skepticism, not that the Chamber existed— there are ancient archives in my possession that have alluded to such for centuries— but that the diary of a Dark Lord could open such vaults so easily.”

“The fragment of his soul wrote to Ginny through the pages.” Hermione did not mask the disdain in her tone. “She poured enough of her heart and her magic into the horcrux that he grew strong. He possessed her. Made her feel special. Ginny saw Voldemort as a young Tom Riddle and believed him when he flattered her.”

He said nothing for several beats, sitting with her words.

“My first indication that the diary had been more than it seemed, aside from it’s obvious success at reopening the Chamber, did not come until the summer of 1995. Voldemort had done the impossible.”

“And?”

“The dead came collecting. He confronted me about the horcrux— he wanted to know. What possessed me to discard such powerful magic like it was nothing? He wanted to punish. Did I know what I’d done? That night was the first time he cursed Narcissa.” Lucius stopped to finish his drink. “I can still hear her.”

Hermione didn’t ask him to elaborate. It seemed true enough, and if the tale was a lie, well— who was around to disprove it?

“You suspected horcruxes afterward?”

“Among other possibilities. I pondered the Dark Lord’s blackest magics, specifically the necromancy that he employed in that graveyard in Little Hangleton. _Blood of the enemy, bone of the father, flesh of the servant_ ,” Lucius paused and poured himself another. “Gruesome spellwork. That Potter survived the night is miraculous.”

“You were there. Harry told us, after.”

He nodded. “The mark reappeared throughout the year, burning the night of the Triwizard Tournament. I apparated from the spectator stands before answering his call.”

Hermione shuddered at the memories. She’d heard this, of course. Harry had seen Igor Karkaroff’s mark while following Snape around that same year.

“So when you saw the locket?” Hermione prompted, regaining Lucius’s focus from where it had drifted beyond her shoulder.

He cleared his throat.

“When I saw the locket I was reminded once more of a broken thing connected to the legacy of Salazar Slytherin, another timeless artifact for Lord Voldemort to covet. He’d returned once, through some mechanism no one dared to look into but me. Nothing stopped him from doing it again. I have a vast history of dark magic at my disposal— piecing together the horcrux concept took little effort.”

Lucius Malfoy's smooth prose was famous. She said nothing for a long while, considering the likelihood of each murmured sentence.

There had been no Order members curious or proximate enough to discover the horcruxes besides their former headmaster, and stone had long slid over that tomb.

“Dumbledore knew as well. He told Harry about the horcruxes in our sixth year.”

Lucius nodded but said nothing, as if he’d already suspected this.

“When he died that night on the Astronomy Tower,” Hermione began, “Dumbledore was coming back from retrieving this.”

She tapped the locket, winding the chain through her fingers absentmindedly. It really was grim, all chunky metal and gaudy stone.

“How many horcruxes has Potter destroyed?” Lucius asked.

Hermione shook her head at him and sipped her drink, killing time. She found herself in an interesting position. The people she trusted were unable to give her informed advice and here was Lucius Malfoy, who acted as if he wanted to gain her trust, voicing the very questions whose answers she had kept secret.

“Does Malfoy Manor even _have_ a library? Or was that something that Draco made up just to spite the mudblood bookworm?”

Lucius rolled his eyes at her obvious evasion.

“Of course.”

“Where is it?”

“On this very floor, though currently unavailable to…” he seemed to search for a word before giving up. “You.”

“Unavailable to me?”

“Mmhm.”

She bristled. “And why is that?”

“Poor Hermione Granger, _persona non grata_ from a library.” He mocked, stoking her disdain.

“It’s not any library,” she countered, feeling her temperature rise. “And I need in because some old codger stole my books. Maybe you know him? Tall bloke, decent hair but never confident in his own research.”

Lucius laughed outright, startling both of them.

“What a pity, to find that you kept no notes.”

“All the better to keep secrets from people like you.” Hermione gathered her curls into a low bun.

“People like me?”

“People who think they’re entitled to whatever anyone else has.”

He gave her a withering look that she ignored, although Hermione supposed the ‘entitled’ angle fell rather stale on Malfoy ears.

“How many horcruxes have been destroyed, Hermione?”

“Why won’t you let me in your library, Lucius?”

They stared at each other for a long moment, each taking the other’s measure across the desk. Hermione felt a begrudging respect blooming for Lucius. He’d made several quick decisions despite the duress of his wife’s death and mass uncertainty. He’d paid attention over the years, even as Bellatrix and Voldemort dominated his home.

Hermione understood how Lucius had been a formidable enemy in the Wizengamot and the Hogwarts Board of Governors. He had that cunning chill about him, putting his money, status, and— she balked a little, thinking of the Unbreakable Vow— his _life_ where his mouth was.

He was still handsome, despite years of stress and a trip to Azkaban. It was another factor that contributed to his influence. The longer she spent around him, the more Hermione saw how Lucius Malfoy oozed a confident appeal, stylish despite his age, dangerous by nature of his affiliations, and bloody intelligent to boot.

She hoped he hadn’t read too much into her stare. The impasse stretched, but Hermione was impatient after so many days of boredom.

“Where’s Draco?”

His facade slid into place. “France.”

“France?”

“Southern France, if you must.” Lucius’s tone was terse.

“Why is Dra—”

“I find it intriguing that _you alone_ seek my company, Hermione. Where is Mister Potter tonight?” he countered slyly.

“Distracting. Good one.” Hermione returned his smirk. “I find it intriguing that _you alone_ know where my books have made off to, not to mention the sword of Gryffindor.”

For once, his expression gave him away.

“Ah ha!”

“I certainly wasn’t going to leave it spattered with bits of Dolohov,” he hedged. “Nor did I fancy handing the sword to Shacklebolt and dooming it to the Department of Mysteries.”

The description made Hermione grimace. “Is it all just take and take, Malfoy? A few books here, an old horcrux there— the sword isn’t a horcrux, just in case you were wondering. Too many brave Gryffindors kept it out of Tom’s hands.”

“Quaint.”

She found him infuriating.

“I hope that both it _and_ Harry’s Invisibility Cloak have proved useful to you.” The conversation’s tone disintegrated as Hermione stopped playing verbal games, voicing her accusations. “Just think of how much easier it would have been to slink around your house when your Lord lived in it.”

Lucius didn’t give her an inch. “Pray tell, what _is_ it that you miss the most about the late Mr. Weasley?”

It was emotionally disarming, and she shot back with equal cruelty.

“What do you miss the most about Narcissa?”

“Her cunning, followed closely by her quim of course,” Lucius retorted confidently. Hermione choked.

“My late wife was delectable, but the damning consequences of her frequent torture ensured that it had been far too long since I’d had the opportunity.”

Hermione’s face was boiling, an undoubted side-effect of the fever dream that she must have walked into. Breaking from his self-satisfied stare felt like losing, but how _did_ one reply to _that_ from Lucius Malfoy?

“That’s what I get for expecting sentiment from a Slytherin.” She managed.

“On the contrary, I find myself quite sentimental about it.”

Hermione snickered at Lucius’s defiant expression and he seemed to soften in turn.

“The sword is secure, here in the manor.”

“Where?”

“ _Bloody Gryffindor_ — There is a vault.”

She realized Lucius’s speaking voice wasn’t unpleasant so long as he wasn’t using it to cross her verbally, an embarrassing phenomena that she hoped he didn't catch on to.

“Why did you take it?” she asked.

He replied too easily. “How many horcruxes have been destroyed?”

“How many do _you_ think have been destroyed?” Their verbal foxtrot nearly made her head explode. She leaned back in her chair and crossed a foot over the opposite knee, aspiring to nonchalance.

In high contrast Lucius’s spine stayed straight, shoulders pulled back and down in perfect posture, emphasizing his larger frame. Though skinnier than she remembered from childhood, Lucius was still a large person.

He now stood, meeting her words where they hung in the air.

“Clearly, and most astonishingly— not all of them.” Refastening his waistcoat, Lucius strode around and past her. “Perhaps we shall resume at another time.”

Hermione was still processing the words unspoken in his reply when she heard the click of the opening door. She stood, glaring at him.

Lucius held the door open wide, obscuring the bookshelf she’d noted earlier for its curious enchantment.

“Terrible manners for such a fancy pureblood.”

“Spare me,” the words fell flat and his eyes flicked down her frame. “We can discuss manners when you’re wearing only one type of denim.”

Hermione blushed, she couldn’t help it. The black trousers she wore were indeed denim, as was her worn overshirt. She walked towards him and was nearly out of room when his voice stopped her.

“Ms. Granger?”

She craned her neck over her shoulder to look back at him, catching the subtle deviation of his eyeline from her own pupils down the long line of her neck and back.

“I trust that you no longer require me to impress upon you the importance of Occlumency when one finds themselves mired in such secrets. Tallie will supply you with more advanced texts.”

Hermione sighed. The concession was not what she’d wanted when she stormed up the manors levels but after such a conversation, it would do for the day. She gave him a single nod which he returned before swinging shut the wood behind her.

The latch clicked with a sense of finality and Hermione found herself alone in the corridor, marveling at the way her conversations with Lucius Malfoy provided as many questions as they did answers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My tumblr is also vexlonely if you're into that sort of thing. Thanks for sticking with me!


End file.
